Duration: 18 months
Achieving cost-effective lignocellulosic biomass degradation is key to unlocking vast amounts of renewable resources as feedstocks for the circular economy. Current lignocellulosic pretreatment approaches are not cost-effective for widescale implementation. The aim of the project is to develop a novel lignocellulosic biomass pretreatment technology that exploits the synergy between ionic liquids (ILs) and enzyme-mediated reactions. The project will select and characterize extremophilic microorganisms that can develop under IL treatments, and identify their key hydrolytic enzymes. These enzymes will be heterologously expressed to establish the enzyme-IL biocompatibility, allowing an integrative strategy for efficient biomass conversion using enzyme-IL tandems. This project will deliver a novel technology for cost-efficient lignocellulose degradation, and enable the use of lignocellulosic biomass as feedstock for biotechnological production routes of bio-based chemicals and materials. This proposition does not only help advanced towards a more sustainable society, but has strong commercial appeal. Additionally, due to its close-loop nature, it could be also applied to pretreat mission residues in bioregenerative life support systems for space exploration.
