Next-generation sustainable bioproducts

Intensified agriculture and fossil fuels have served mankind with a wide range of abundant and affordable food products, energy carriers and consumer goods. Today however, planetary boundaries are jeopardizing current living standards, the need to reinforce underdeveloped regions, and accommodating further growth until 2050. This calls for a next generation of products that can replace less sustainable practices, and also are innovative, providing better functions and sustainable solutions. Bioproducts, made from low-carbon emitting feedstocks and renewable energy with the help of biology, e.g. via fermentation, are expected to take a leading role in this transition. In this talk several state-of-the-art examples will be provided, and also it will be outlined what will likely be main future bioproducts, how they best can be manufactured on industrial scale, and what is needed to speed up and overcome the „innovation valley of death.

Applying „zero-thinking“ will be key to success. How to maximize industrial performance with zero carbon and energy spills, zero use of fossil inputs, zero losses in development time and zero emissions to the environment?

Two most critical steps are value chain re-design, and robust design of the industrial fermentation. Feedstocks made from CO₂ using renewable energy will be complementary to land-derived feedstocks such as sugars, which are associated with land-use issues such as irrigation water use, biodiversity loss and rainforest destruction. Industrial bioprocesses should become more tolerant to industrial „stresses“ such as concentration gradients and product inhibition, and bioreactors better supported by computational tools that can reproduce the process with high resolution and fidelity, enabling digital twins to allow best-informed decision-making in operations. Such simulation methods, however, today still require massive computation efforts and are not yet fit for broad, real-time deployment. Here, machine learning and artificial intelligence can be deployed to speed up and improve computation efficiency. Latest insights on these developents will be shared, all key to secure commercialization of next-generation bioproducts and the transition to a more sustainable society.