Green Resources
Twenty to thirty percent of the total amount of green resources imported or grown in the Netherlands has either an application in the non-food area or is considered as waste. Applications are found for the larger part in feed, but due to diminishing livestock and changing legislation this market is shrinking.
These green resources, however, can be applied in high-value, safe, consumer products, materials, chemicals and fuels. Besides the need for development of new technologies to make these applications viable, this also calls for new links between the agrifood industry and the chemical (and other) sectors.
For this to become possible, new technological options should be developed for the release of valuable materials from biomass and the further development of these materials into products, via sustainable processes. Furthermore knowledge should be built-up on how to link different industrial sectors around new products and processes and what the role of various stakeholders (government, industry and research institutions) in this process can be. Also knowledge is needed on the critical success factors of the process of innovation when various industrial partners in different sectors are involved.
Technological knowledge is built up around three spearheads:
- Building blocks for green chemistry
- Natural complexity for functionality
- Keys for green processes
Biobased economy.
One of the main bottleneck in bringing biobased products to the market is the fact that they often require new production chains consisting of partners that do not know each other and each other s technology on beforehand. Production chains will therefore not come into being automatically and direction is needed. The theme focuses around the identification of critical success factors that determine whether or not an innovation will make it to the market and the role needed of different stakeholders, including government, research institutions and industry, in the process will be determined. The research will comprise of pilot projects around concrete technical innovations that meet the market introduction barriers and different ways to tackle these barrieres will be investigated.
Publications of this programme are available Here |
