Two-thirds of the carbon fed into a typical biomanufacturing process is lost as CO₂ or waste before it ever becomes a product. This project aims to build the first manufacturing system that captures that lost carbon and reuses it inside the same process, so nothing escapes. Most industrial chemicals and materials today come from fossil feedstocks, releasing large amounts of CO₂ during production. Even biomanufacturing—which uses biological systems to make everything from vaccines to bio-lubricants—still emits carbon. The core problem is inefficiency: only about one-third of the carbon input ends up in the final product. The team will create a "Zero Carbon Loss" system that integrates carbon capture and utilisation directly into the manufacturing line. A digital twin of the process will run real-time sustainability assessments, guiding decisions as the technology develops rather than checking environmental impact after the fact. If successful, the approach could transform how the UK makes pharmaceuticals, plastics, textiles, and composite materials—industries that together represent a potential £4.5 billion gross value added and 63,000 jobs by 2030, while saving an estimated 2.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year.
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Nearly 140,000 industrial materials and chemicals are marketed worldwide. Most of them are made from fossil feedstocks with high CO2 emission embedded, and very low resources efficiency. To maintain the UK's global competitiveness, it is vital to identify sustainable alternatives for the manufacturing of these chemicals and materials. Biomanufacturing, that utilises biological systems to produce commercially important biomaterials and biomolecules plays an important role in sustainable development, and has shown successful applications in manufacturing electronic components (e.g., bio-based flexible printed circuits), fine or specialty chemicals (e.g., bio-lubricants), building and construction (e.g., biocementation), consumer products (e.g., bio-based detergents), food (e.g., vitamin and amino acid fortification) and pharmaceuticals (e.g., vaccine production). However, none of the current biomanufacturing routes has achieved zero carbon loss or emission. In fact, many bioprocesses (such as those involving fermentation) will emit large amounts of CO2. In a typical biomanufacturing, only 2/3 of the carbon resources flow ends up in final products, while the rest 1/3 are lost during the manufacturing process, in the form of CO2 emissions and residue wastes. To address this challenge, the project will create the first-of-its-kind Zero Carbon Loss biomanufacturing system that will pave the way for the UK to reach the 2050 Net Zero target. This will be achieved by developing novel sustainable biomanufacturing of aromatics, heterocyclics and other lignocellulosics products with integrated carbon capture and utilization within the manufacturing process. These bio-based products, like building blocks of Lego, then will be used in different combinations to make various product such as pharmaceuticals, plastics, textile, composite materials, etc, with overall net zero carbon loss (emission and waste) throughout the manufacturing life cycle. The technology innovation and resources optimisation of the BMCCU manufacturing route (WP1) will be guided by real-time system wide sustainability assessments (WP3), linked by an interoperable digital twin of the manufacturing process beyond the state of the art (WP2). It creates a new approach in which the lifecycle sustainability assessments will serve as an interactive decision-making tool fully embedded in the early-stage technology developments, rather than traditional retrospective assessment. The project will contribute significantly to the UK's National Industrial Biotechnology Strategy, with a potential scope of £4.5 billion GVA, 63,000 jobs, and 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2 saving per year by 2030. To achieve the vision, this proposal brings together a diverse multidisciplinary team from Loughborough University, Heriot-Watt University and Imperial College London, with world leading expertise in circular economy, intelligent manufacturing, industrial digitalisation and decarbonisation.
Andrew West (Co-Investigator)Huizhi Wang (Co-Investigator)Jin Xuan (Principal Investigator)John Andresen (Co-Investigator)Mercedes Maroto-Valer (Co-Investigator)
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