INFINITY will develop an inorganic alternative to a scarce and high cost material, indium tin oxide (ITO), currently used as a Transparent Conductive Coating (TCC) for display electrodes on glass and plastic substrates. The novel conductive materials to be developed in this project will be based on low cost sol-gel chemistry using more widely available metallic elements and will leverage recent advances in nanostructured coatings. Novel printing procedures will also be developed to enable direct writing of multi and patterned nano-layers, removing the waste associated with etch patterning.

DDGS is the major co-product of bioethanol fermentation and is produced at very large quantities annually worldwide. Currently, DDGS is a low value agro-industrial product produced by distillers or bioethanol factories, and is primarily used as a protein-rich animal feed. A major issue with this application, which reduces its utilisation compared to soybean and canola meals, is its compositional variability, which consequently affects its nutritional quality and digestibility. The aim of the proposed work is to develop a novel, scalable and economically viable process that will transform DDGS into several medium to high value products, namely a prebiotic food ingredient, gluten protein for film packaging, betaine and choline for use as nutritional supplements, and crude dietary fibre. The proposed process is based on the biorefinery concept in which the agricultural raw material is transformed into several value-added streams, which are either end-products or starting materials for secondary processing. Developing such a multi-stream process using DDGS as the raw material would be pioneering for the biorefinery industry as it would add considerable value to DDGS. Prebiotics are non-digestible food ingredients that have a beneficial effect on health through their selective metabolism by bacteria in the intestinal tract, and are attractive prospects in the digestive health market. The objective will be to transform arabinoxylan (AX), which consists 30-50% of DGGS, into arabinooligosaccharides (AXOS); these have been shown to have prebiotic activities and over the last five years have attracted considerable commercial interest. A commercially attractive prospect is to target the production of AXOS with relatively high molecular weights (MW) in an effort to increase the persistence of the prebiotics in the colon and target delivery into the distal region. This would increase the beneficial effects of prebiotics as most of the colonic diseases, principally ulcerative colitis and bowel cancer, predominantly originate in the distal region. Gluten on the other hand consists 30-40% of DDGS and will be used to produce biodegradable film packaging material. The research will focus on extracting and characterising the gluten and evaluating the properties of the films. This will open up new applications for DDGS gluten with high market potential and economic benefits. Finally, betaine and choline have important biological functions for human health and as such they have received a lot of commercial interest as nutritional supplements. They are present in wheat and consequently in DDGS at much higher concentrations than in other natural food sources, and therefore extraction of these compounds from DDGS has considerable economic and market potential. The proposed process consists of several scalable unit operations including the separation of DDGS into a soluble and non soluble stream, the fractionation of the soluble steam into gluten, AX, betaine and choline, the controlled hydrolysis of AX to AXOS, and the purification of AXOS. Key factors influencing the efficiency, scalability and economic feasibility of the process are (i) the development of efficient processing steps for the separation of the raw material into the target compounds, with high yields and purities, (ii) the utilisation of highly active enzymes that lead to the controlled synthesis of AXOS with specific MW and prebiotic activities and (iii) the production of gluten films with suitable morphological and functional properties for commercial use. The work will be carried by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Reading and Rothamsted Research and will bring together unique expertise in wheat biochemistry, bioprocessing, protein science, food ingredient functionality and gut microbiology.

A consortium of teams from 6 universities aims to achieve major advances in a technology that potentially produces electricity directly from sustainable biological materials and air, in devices known as biological fuel cells. These devices are of two main types: in microbial fuel cells micro-organisms convert organic materials into fuels that can be oxidised in electrochemical cells, and in enzymatic fuel cells electricity is produced as a result of the action of an enzyme (a biological catalyst). Fuels that can be used include (1) pure biochemicals such as glucose, (2) hydrogen gas and (3) organic chemicals present in waste water.The Consortium programme involves a unique combination of microbiology, enzymology, electrochemistry, materials science and computational modelling. Key challenges that the Consortium will face include modelling and understanding the interaction of an electrochemical cell and a population of micro-organisms, attaching and optimising appropriate enzymes, developing and studying synthetic assemblies that contain the active site of a natural enzyme, optimising electrode materials for this application, and designing, building and testing novel biological fuel cells.A Biofuel Cells Industrial Club is to be formed, with industrial partners active in water management, porous materials, microbiology, biological catalysis and fuel cell technology. The programme and its outcomes will be significant steps towards producing electricity from materials and techniques originating in the life sciences. The technology is likely to be perceived as greener than use of solely chemical and engineering approaches, and there is considerable potential for spin off in changed technologies (e.g. cost reductions, reduction in the need for precious metals, biological catalysts for production of hydrogen by electrolysis).

We currently make more than just fuel from petroleum refining. Many of the plastics, solvents and other products that are used in everyday life are derived from these non-renewable resources. Our research programme aims to replace many of the common materials used as plastics with alternatives created from plants. This will enable us to tie together the UK's desire to move to non-petroleum fuel sources (e.g. biofuels) with our ability to produce renewable polymers and related products. Plant cell walls are made up of two main components: carbohydrate polymers (long chains of sugars) and lignin, which is the glue holding plants together. We will first develop methods of separating these two components using sustainable solvents called ionic liquids. Ionic liquids are salts which are liquids at room temperature, enabling a variety of chemical transformations to be carried out under consitions not normally available to traditional organic solvents. These ionic liquids also reduce pollution as they have no vapours and can be made from non-toxic, non-petroleum based resources. We will take the isolated carbohydrate polymers and break them down into simple sugars using enzymes and then further convert those sugars into building blocks for plastics using a variety of novel catalytic materials specifically designed for this process. The lignin stream will also be broken down and rebuilt into new plastics that can replace common materials. All of these renewable polymers will be used in a wide range of consumer products, including packaging materials, plastic containers and construction materials. The chemical feedstocks that we are creating will be flexible (used for chemical, material and fuel synthesis), safe (these feedstocks are predominantly non-toxic) and sustainable (most of the developed products are biodegradable). This will help reduce the overall environmental impact of the material economy in the UK. The chemistry that we will use focusses on creating highly energy efficient and low-cost ways of making these materials without producing large amounts of waste. We are committed to only developing future manufacturing routes that are benign to the environment in which we all live. In addition, natural material sources often have properties that are superior to those created using artificial means. We plan to exploit these advantages of natural resources in order to produce both replacements for current products and new products with improved performance. This will make our synthetic routes both environmentally responsible and economically advantageous. The UK has an opportunity to take an international lead in this area due to the accumulation of expertise within this country. The overall goal of this project is to develop sustainable manufacturing routes that will stimulate new UK businesses and environmentally responsible means of making common, high value materials. We will bring together scientific experts in designing processes, manufacturing plastics, growing raw biomass resources and developing new chemistries. The flexibility of resources is vital to the success of this endeavour, as no single plant biomass can be used for manufacturing on a year-round basis. Together with experienced leaders of responsible manufacturing industries, we will develop new ways of making everyday materials in a sustainable and economically beneficial way. The result of this research will be a fundamental philosophical shift to our material, chemical, and energy economy. The technologies proposed in this work will help break our dependence on rapidly depleting fossil resources and enable us to become both sustainable and self-sufficient. This will result in greater security, less pollution, and a much more reliable and responsible UK economy.