For decades, Europe has been facing a huge protein deficit (more than 70% is imported). Today, the objective is to initiate ways to sustainably produce proteins in Europe, by creating new cross-sectorial businesses. Partners within the consortium have been developing a bio-refinery concept allowing transformation of woody biomass into high-value Single Cell Protein (SCP) to be used as animal feed. The SYLFEED project consists in upscaling the bio-refinery process to ensure successful demonstration of Arbiom Wood to Food technology consisting in converting lignocellulose into SCP for use in aquaculture. SYLFEED will demonstrate the synergies between forestry industry and protein fish feed market, creating new high value opportunities for the former and an alternative, sustainable, protein source for the latter. Wood residues are abundant and highly sustainable and SCP present an amino-acid profile close to that of the fishes, making them an excellent raw material in fish feed formulation (there is room for more than 50 lignocellulose bio-refineries in Europe, leading to the production of at least 1.4 Mt of proteins and a significant reduction of the protein gap). SYLFEED spans across the full value chain: from biomass stakeholder to fish feed sellers (future buyers of SYLFEED proteins), including biomass-to-SCP technology developer/ experts. SYLFEED’s ambition is threefold: - To respond to strategic needs of protein production in Europe to increase self-sufficiency. - To improve the local economy (forest industry), save jobs in important industrial sectors and create new ones in the bio-economy. - To produce proteins for fish feed in a way that addresses local and global environmental issues (oceans overexploitation and negative effects of plant’s culture – soybean, corn...). To do so, the grand challenge of the SYLFEED demonstration project is to upscale from pilot scale and validate the bio-refinery process that converts lignocellulose into SCP suitable to formulate fish feed.

The primary aim of ReSolve is to replace the hazardous solvents toluene and N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) with safe alternatives derived from non-food carbohydrates. Starting from promising bio-based platform molecules, an effective combination of computational modelling, high-throughput toxicity testing and evaluation of application performance will be used to design bespoke bio-based solvents. New structures will not contain the toxic aromatic or N-alkylamide functionalities that make toluene and NMP substances of very high concern. At least one primary apolar and one primary dipolar aprotic substitute for toluene and NMP respectively will be targeted. These solvents will be designed to serve a wide range of applications, will be brought to pilot-scale production at TRL 5. Their sustainability, low health impact and high application performance will also be demonstrated. The provision of safe and economically viable bio-based solvents by ReSolve will allow the full benefit of regulatory restrictions on the use of aromatic and nitrogen-containing solvents to be felt without a negative impact on the economic security of the European solvents industries. The impact of this research is also relevant to thousands of downstream businesses and consumers that are dependent on solvents. Above all, it will positively affect the health and safety of the millions of European citizens who are routinely exposed to solvents as part of their job. Additionally, ReSolve is set-up to produce a pipeline of new solvent candidates meaning that not only will a couple of candidates be taken to TRL 5, but many more candidates for specific applications will also be progressed to TRL 3-4, thus offering greater substitution options for hazardous solvents in the near future.