The AFTERLIFE project proposes a flexible, cost & resource-efficient process, following the principles of zero waste and circular economy for the recovery and valorisation of wastewater three water-intensive food industries, processing citrus (Citromil SL), cheeses (Heritage 1466) and candies (Jake SA) to obtain pure compounds of interest with high added value. This is a European collaboration project framed in the call for biologically based industries, within the HORIZON2020 framework (H2020-BBI-JTI-2016), in which Technological Centre Lurederra is one of the 15 partners that make up the consortium.
After a first stage of the project in which the wastewater was analysed and treated in different solid / liquid separation processes, the different fractions obtained will be processed in this second stage to obtain pure high added value compounds with applications in the field of food and cosmetics.
In this second stage, which runs throughout the current year 2019, Lurederra actively participates with Celabor (Belgian technological centre of international reference in the field of food technologies) in the analysis of compounds of interest, in the extraction of these compounds using “green” technologies and in the concentration and purification of compounds such as limonene, hesperidin, limonin or vitamin C to obtain an additional value. Finally, its stability and anti-oxidant, antimicrobial and anti-aging capacity will be analysed for its application as a cosmetic additive and for the elaboration of different food products.
In addition, in accordance with the zero waste strategy, all waste products will be used in subsequent tasks for anaerobic digestion processes to obtain bioplastics.
For more information or to follow the evolution of the Afterlife Project, visit its website https://afterlife-project.eu/ or contact directly the Technological Centre Lurederra.