The PROMOFER project is funded by the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking. It aims to produce circular biobased products for use in the agriculture, packaging and textiles sectors from low value, renewable feedstocks (specifically starches, whey permeate, industrial wastewater, rice straw, wheat straw and prune waste). 

Its main goal is to make the fermentation process involved in producing two of the most commercialised biobased compounds more efficient. These compounds are Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV), a flexible, biodegradable and biobased polymer with good thermal and mechanical properties, and 2,3-butanediol (2,3-BDO), a chemical compound in high demand for a wide range of applications (printing inks, perfumes, fumigants, moistening agents and softening agents). Producing these compounds via fermentation is not new, but current methods are unable to compete with chemical synthesis processes.

The project has now been running for 18 of the planned 48 months and has just met to take stock of progress:

• They have completed the collection, characterization and pretreatment of agricultural and food industrial wastes,
• Enzymatic hydrolysis and detoxification protocols have been optimised for high sugar recovery and are ready to be demonstrated, 
• Microorganism isolation and characterization for PHBV production are complete,
• Pretreatment and impurity removal of food wastes have been optimized, 
• Downstream process optimisation has recently started,
• Validation of PHBV formulations for packaging and agriculture has begun, while planning for 2,3-BDO validation, PU-based fabrics and safety assessments is ongoing.