Process and product evaluation of carbohydrate-based fine chemicals

CARBAFIN is a collaborative research project, which started in January 2018 and will last until December 2021. It is co-financed by the European Union with a funding of 5.3 million EUR. The EU-consortium consists of eight members coming from five different countries. A phosphorylase-based platform for the sustainable production of functional glucosides from sucrose is being developed. The aim is to generate a new value chain for the use of surplus sugar beet biomass in the EU by the separate conversion of glucose and fructose into value-adding products on an industrial scale.

The Working Group Sustainable Construction and the Institute of Business Administration and Industrial Sociology at Graz University of Technology are responsible for the investigation of economic feasibility and evaluation of the developed biochemical processes within CARBAFIN. Next to economic evaluation work package 6 contains the environmental process evaluation (LCA) which build the bases for techno-economic and techno-environmental improvement strategies. Live cycle costing and life cycle assessment therefore is considered in each phase of development and route selection, and generally embedded in strategic process decisions within the CARBAFIN research project.