Processing of biowaste for sustainable products in developing countries

The modern global society faces great challenges in supply of energy, feed, food, and other products in a sustainable way. One way to mitigate the negative effects of providing these local eco-services is to convert biomass – instead of petroleum or natural gas – into a variety of food, feed, biomaterials, energy and fertilizer, maximizing the value of the biomass and minimizing the waste. This integrated approach corresponds to the biorefinery concept and is gaining attention in many parts of the world (Kam & Kam 2004). Energy, food and feed production is the driver for development in this area, but as biorefineries become more and more sophisticated with time, other products will be developed. Today, almost all organic chemicals - and also fertilizer - are produced from crude oil and petroleum and technologies with are driven by fossil energy, thus referred to as petro-chemicals and fossil fertilizer. It is generally anticipated that white biotechnology, the use of fermentation and enzymatic processes will play a key role for future cleaner production of bulk chemicals, energy carriers as well as fertilizer from biomass sources by saving resources and reduce negative environmental impacts from the chemical production. In order to replace fossil based energy carriers, chemicals and fertilizer, cost is the critical challenge for success. Thus, easily accessible and low costs biomass feedstock is a prerequisite for making bio-based production economically feasible. Industrial, agriculture and municipal biowastes have the potential to be that resource. However, it is of great importance to be aware of how to utilize the different sources of biowaste and for which purpose. In October 2012, a new EU project, funded under the FP7 programme was launched with partners from the EU, Africa and Malaysia. The objective of the proposed project is to show and demonstrate the technical roadmap - a strategy - for efficient technological utilization of selected significant biowaste in five African countries - Morocco, Egypt, Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya- derived from both the industrial and agricultural sector, thus, turning biowaste into a new resource for sustainable products. Our group is involved in developing strains and microbial fermentation processes for these bioconversions.