The goal of the project is to develop a sustainable strategy for the valorisation of fish waste streams into high value products by using green solvents (supercritical carbon dioxide, ScCO2, subcritical water, sCW, and natural deep eutectic solvents, NADES) within the concept of integrated biorefining.
Globally, approximately 167 Mton of fish were produced in 2014, of which ca. 20% resulted in by-products or waste. Moreover, the world fish supply has been growing during the last decades at an average rate of 3% per year, which is higher than the world?s population growth rate of ca. 1.7%. Fish waste consists of heads, tails, skin, gut, fins and frames, and has been used to produce fish silage, fertilizer and animal feeds, with low profit. Yet, they have an average dry weight content of 60% proteins, 20% lipids, 2% crude fiber plus vitamins and biopolymers, thus being a great source of value-added products such as proteins and amino acids, collagen, oil and enzymes.
Our strategy will be to evaluate the utility of the mentioned green solvents under different processing configurations to extract lipid, protein, and biopolymer-rich fractions from selected wastes streams resulting from the fish canning industry (sardines and cod fish). The safety and functional activity of the fractions generated using green solvents will be evaluated using recognized in vitro tools. The main milestone of this proposal will be to obtain a variety of bioactive extracts that have efficacy within of society as nutraceuticals, personal-care/cosmetics and biomedical sectors.
This project will benefit from the solid complementary experience and expertise of the research team as well as from the fact that both institutions involved are fully equipped with state of the art equipment required for the development of the project. NOVA.ID has several lab and pilot scale units operating with ScCO2, sCW and NADES, and IBET has a large range of analytical equipment (UPLC, HPLC-ESI-MS, GC-MS, NanoLC-MALDI-TOF/TOF, TripleTOF) and an Animal Cells Technology Unit with internationally recognised expertise in cell based assays development for toxicity/bioactivity assays and pre-clinical research models.
Furthermore, Susfishwaste brings together feedstock producers, which will provide the raw materials for the execution of the project - A Poveira, the leading company in the Portuguese fish canning industry, and also Pascoal, one of the leading Portuguese companies in the production of frozen cod fish - as well as a service provider - Phytatec Ltd, an industrial biotechnology company with several years of experience on providing sustainable platform solutions for full use of renewable biomass. Phytatec Ltd focuses on the valorisation of biomass into food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, chemical and material products, with an emphasis on zero waste and environmental impact.