HydRegen is an early stage life-science start up committed to delivering next-generation manufacturing technologies that bridge between chemistry and biology, to fast-track cost and carbon competitive process that meet safety and sustainability requirements for UK manufacturing. Drochaid is a well-established industry specialist in catalyst screening, testing and characterisation, delivering catalyst benchmarking across the chemicals sector (including with Pharmaceutical companies), and is an expert in catalytic hydrogenation processes that are central to this project In this project, innovation and development of green, bio-manufacturing strategies for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) at HydRegen are tested and scaled by industry experts, Drochaid. The resulting process is benchmarked against state-of-the-art metal-catalysed processes, to provide data for sustainability and cost improvements and reporting. Targeted at a specific API in this project, the workflows and developments will provide a 'blue print' for rapid deployment across many other APIs and intermediates by project end.

Surfactants are chemicals with both hydrophilic (water loving) and hydrophobic (water hating) regions, which makes them extremely useful for mixing oils and water, stabilising foams and removing dirt from surfaces and laundry. As a result, surfactants are used across a broad array of industrial sectors and products, including laundry detergents and cleaning, personal care (shampoos, hand and body wash liquids), plant protection, in paints and coatings and as emulsifiers in pharmaceuticals. Most of the surfactants available today are substantially derived from fossil carbon. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve Net Zero by 2050 (UK Net Zero Strategy), the use of fossil carbon needs to be avoided. Biobased surfactants could be an alternative but those that are currently available have limited functionality and are typically 3 to 5 times more expensive that fossil-based surfactants. However, customers and consumers are demanding sustainable biobased ingredients and there is a real need now for highly functional, biobased surfactants for applications such as laundry detergents. This project will demonstrate the potential for novel biobased surfactants, based on lignin from woody biomass, to replace fossil-derived surfactants. First, the lignin will be extracted from the biomass. Then it will be depolymerised into its constituent subunits and finally it will be converted to a surfactant through addition of an oily hydrophobe. The properties of the resultant surfactant and its potential for use in laundry detergents will be explored. The success of our project, Lignofact, will strengthen the UK renewables economy and deliver not only an exciting new surfactant but highly trained experts in biomass use to help drive the research in renewable carbon and sustainable biomass in UK industry.

Driven by a range of sustainability challenges such as climate change, resource depletion and an expanding population, a circular bioeconomy concept is emerging which envisages the use and re-use of sustainable resources to meet pressing societal needs. This will accelerate in the coming decades, with biorefineries and bio-based products as key cornerstones. This in turn demands the development of new technologies to replace fossil resources as the primary feedstocks; such technologies will only be adopted at suitable scale if the economics are right for all involved. Levwave seeks to explore an innovative and highly efficient technology to produce a key sustainable chemical, levulinic acid (LA) by using aqueous streams available in the paper industry. LA has been identified as one of the top-10 bio-based chemicals. Seen as a "platform" molecule it can displace the use of fossil resources in many applications including as a green solvent, precursor for the production of advanced polymers, pharmaceuticals, additives and other commodity chemicals we all rely on. However, there is no current production in the UK. A project team with outstanding and complementary expertise has been assembled, this contains all the necessary expertise in science, technology, process design, techno-economic and environmental impact assessment and spans the entire value chain. At the heart of this concept is the microwave assisted catalytic transformation of aqueous biomass containing streams into LA. The biochar also be produced will be assessed for energy generation. The basic concept has been demonstrated by the University partner. There are several innovative aspects of this project; the impact of advanced catalysts on process and product will be assessed, the scale up to a continuous process will be studied and the end uses of the products will be investigated. These combined activities will provide data that will inform techno-economic and environmental assessments that will determine the commercial viability of the process from the perspective of both the paper and chemical sectors. This critical new data will be a key output of the project and allow a follow on to be structured accordingly, focussing on the critical aspects. This project clearly responds to the ISCF call to bring together two foundation industry sectors to explore mutually beneficial technology developments that would not occur independently. Longer term the production of this key platform molecule will drive the national ambition to become leaders in low carbon, sustainable manufacturing and create regionally distributed, highly skilled manufacturing jobs.