New project aims to revolutionise Sustainable Protein Production for Food and Aquaculture

The GreenImPro project will transform the production of protein ingredients for food, aquaculture, and feed for monogastric animals in a single project. The project not only offers economic benefits but also boasts a positive climate and environmental impact. By upcycling traditional feed crops to food ingredients and replacing soy protein in feed formulations, it has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly. Innovation Fund Denmark has invested almost DKK 11 million in the project.

The core idea behind the project is to produce high-quality sustainable white protein isolate and concentrate ingredients for use in food applications and aquafeed in co-production with green protein for feed, leveraging raw materials such as alfalfa, white clover, and sea lettuce.

Overcoming colour and antinutritional factors (ANFs) presents a challenge, but GreenImPro will tackle this hurdle by combining heat treatment with filtration using an innovative vibrational membrane technology.

The process, which was developed and optimized at Department of Food Science, Aarhus University (AU) will be refined and optimized in a demonstration biorefinery facility at Aarhus University before being scaled up to commercial production at the Project Lead, the company BioRefine.

“If we succeed with the project and can produce high quality protein for the food industry, BioRefine expects a substantial increase in production sites. It will ensure both scalability and economy of production of protein from alfalfa and clover,” says Project Leader Laila Thirup from BioRefine.

The GreenImPro consortium is composed of research and industry partners with diverse capabilities.

The involved departments from Aarhus University possess in-depth knowledge of the complex chemistry of the biomasses involved, expertise in agile scale-up within demonstration facilities, and facilities for testing protein quality for both food and feed applications. The Grand Solution project gives possibility to bring all needed capabilities and partners into play.

”GreenImPro gives us the opportunity to work on three different protein qualities for food, aquafeed, and feed for monogastric animals. We are excited to get the chance to deliver science and knowledge with potential to be implemented in industry within a short period of time and which makes a difference in green transition,” says Professor Trine Kastrup Dalsgaard.

The Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering, AU will upscale a process line developed at Department at Food Science, AU, who will also evaluate the food quality together with Toft Care, while Department of Animal and Veterinary Science, AU and BioMar will evaluate the nutritional value in monogastric animals and trouts, respectively. Finally, Department of Green Technology University of Southern Denmark will do Life Cycle Assessment on the whole process.

 Partners such as HedeDenmark bring experience in large-scale, mechanized, and gentle sea lettuce harvests in close collaboration with Department of Ecoscience, AU, while BioRefine contributes with expertise in scaling up and commercial operation of the biorefinery process where SANI Membranes brings their patented membrane technology into play.

Facts

Total budget: 14.7 mio. DKK

Innovation Fund DK’s investment: 10.9 mio. DKK

Duration: 3 years

Official title: GreenImPro - Improved business potential by increasing protein quality from green feed protein to food protein ingredients and high quality aquafeed