The project’s goal is to provide a novel sugar replacement ingredient to the global food market. The ingredient is a specialist carbohydrate sustainably manufactured from a marine microalgae. The project will demonstrate new technology at industrial pilot scale to grow microalgae and purify the product from the microalgae cultures. The project brings together Glycomar Ltd (UK), an SME company specialising in the discovery and development of novel polysaccharide products, MicroA AS (Norway) an SME company specialising in technology for production of microalgae, and a market leading food company. These partners bring together the right skills to develop a game changing sugar replacement product, which will improve the health profile of confectionery and other foods.
2013-11-01 to 2015-09-30
Knowledge Transfer Partnership
To increase drug discovery pipeline through structural characterisation of biologically active saccharides and investigation of the structure-function relationships targeting protein-saccharide interactions.
141,886
2013-10-01 to 2015-09-30
EU-Funded
Awaiting Public Project Summary
141,886
2013-10-01 to 2015-09-30
EU-Funded
Awaiting Public Project Summary
42,481
2012-04-01 to 2013-03-31
Feasibility Studies
GlycoMar Limited, a biotechnology company based in Scotland, and MicroA AS, a microalgae and photobioreactor (PBR) technology company based in Norway, are proposing a feasibility project to evaluate the pilot scale production of an identified high value cosmetic ingredient from a marine microalga. The project will use MicroA’s recently patented PBR technology as the scale-up platform for GlycoMar’s microalgal polysaccharide product development. MicroA will use their pilot scale system (200 litres) to optimise growth conditions for maximum algal polysaccharide production. GlycoMar will optimise downstream processing to maximise recovery of the target product. The project will establish the commercial viability of full-scale production. Success of the project will be an important milestone for both partner companies and the wider biotechnology and microalgae industries, and will lead to commercialisation as a high value natural skin care ingredient within 3 years.
9,750
2011-05-01 to 2011-07-31
Feasibility Studies
Awaiting Public Summary
46,694
2009-10-01 to 2012-09-30
Collaborative R&D
The EXCIL project is focused on recovery of high value components from food processing co-products. Specifically we are interested in the recovery of glycosamino glycans (GAGs) from fish and shellfish byproducts and chitin and polyphenols from brewing waste streams.
The key technology being used within the project is ionic liquids. Ionic Liquids (ILs) are innovative solvents which can provide a high level of selectivity in recovering specific components from complex mixtures. ILs can be considered as 'designer solvents' as their properties can be tailored to meet the requirements of a specific process. These solvents are also generally low toxicity and have no vapour pressure; they are often considered as green alternatives to traditional organic solvents.
Key objectives of this project are to develop extraction methods for target components and obtain samples of extracted materials to evaluate their properties in nutritional or cosmetic applications. Processes developed will also be up-scaled during the project and the environmental and economic viability demonstrated through a robust LCA and techno-economic assesment.