Bioprocessing blueprints for creating value from seaweed

About the speaker: 

Colin Barrow is Deakin Distinguished Professor and Chair of Biotechnology at Deakin University. He is Director of the Centre for Sustainable Bioproducts and a Program Leader for the Marine Bioproducts CRC. His research focuses on biotechnology including creating value from marine and agricultural biomass. He is a Clarivate highly cited researcher (2023) with more than 300 peer-reviewed publications with over 30,000 citations and an H-index of 86. He is a current member of the ARC College of Experts and a member of the TGA Advisory Committee on Complementary Medicines.

Presentation:

They have been developing a bioprocessing/bioproducts toolbox which includes a searchable database of researcher and bioprocessing capability at lab, pilot and manufacturing scale. Using an AI interface they have extended this toolbox to enable the generation of bioprocessing ‘blueprints’. The blueprint concept includes techno-economic modelling, sequential bioproduct extraction and refining, and manufacturing process diagrams. The first example of a validated blueprint, where they have used lab and pilot scale testing to confirm the blueprint was performed for the high value seaweed Asparagopsis. They have also applied this methodology to salmon byproduct. This presentation will describe the strategy for this toolbox and describe the blueprint concept and generation, and its application to marine bioproduct manufacturing using a biorefinery approach.