With a growing global population, food consumption will exceed from that of today. We need to adapt to more sustainable sources and production methods, like using milder processing routes or replacing animal proteins by plant proteins. This implies the use of more complex mixtures as ingredient. We will investigate to what extent these more sustainable ingredient sources and processes can be used to manufacture products with desirable structural and mechanical properties. The strategy is twofold. One is to start with mildly purified plant extracts, investigate bulk and interfacial properties for specific product types and explore the effects of further purification of the ingredients. The other is to start with mixtures of well purified ingredients form the same plant source, investigate the same bulk and interfacial properties and explore the effects of mixing of the ingredients towards more complex composition. For both strategies, plant based protein mixtures are also mixed with dairy proteins to get insights in the effect of replacement of animal by plant protein on food product structural and mechanical properties. In particular we aim a) to understand the conditions to produce products with desirable structural and mechanical properties from more sustainable ingredient sources, b) to quantify sustainability effects of source and processing methods for a set of sources and processes and c) to formulate main lever rules that relate the properties of sustainable produced complex ingredient mixtures for a given source to desired product properties like structure and mechanical properties on all relevant length scales.

This project project combines fundamental and applied research, and experiments and modelling in a unique way: from fundamental material-activity relations and insights into the reaction pathways during DAC with potassium-carbonate-based sorbents, over kinetic models, to heat and mass transport assessment and material shaping at the application scale. By understanding all these factors we aim to develop, together with our industrial partner Shell, new robust sorbent materials which can capture CO2 from air.

Anionic polysaccharides hold great potential as replacements for current non-biodegradable petrochemical based polymers like polyacrylates and polyacrylamides. We will address both short/medium and long term challenges for the sustainable production of anionic polysaccharides from polysaccharides (starch, cellulose, guar, glycogen and amylose). For the short/medium term we propose to replace the current use of stoichiometric amounts of chlorinated compounds such as monochloroacetic acid (used to introduce carboxylate/acetate groups) by a heterogeneous catalyzed process using air as oxidant. As catalyst we opt for Pd, Pt, and Au supported on carbon. The major challenge here is to steer adsorption of the reactant and product in such a way that an optimal and stable conversion is achieved. Adsorption will be steered by tuning the chemical composition i.e. nature and amount of oxygen and/or nitrogen groups on the support of the catalyst. (theme ?bioeconomy?). The biobased industries are new and under strong development and require new competitive value chains. Here we will develop a new process design methodology to define new efficient, green and economic production chains. This design methodology will be based on 1) reverse engineering 2) functional analysis and 3) backward reasoning from the product side. The outcome will be a production chain proposal describing which operations and operational conditions are required to produce a range of requested anionic polysaccharides. The chain starting from starch will be used as show case. This methodology is especially capable to combine the objectives on economics and sustainability in one design step (theme Duurzame ketens en robuuste systemen).

Hydrogenperoxide (H2O2) is currently produced at a Mton scale per year. Currently H2O2 is produced using the anthraquinone process using Pd or Raney nickel catalysts. This is an energy intensive process with a high global warming potential (534 kg CO2 / ton H2O2). Recently one of the project partners developed a new electrochemical process consisting of membrane electrode assembly (MEA) and a new solid electrolyte. Although this process is promising with respect to H2O2 production rates a number of improvements on the electocatalyst, the membrane and the MEA are needed to obtain a stable high productive performance. Fundamental insights in the properties of the catalyst and membrane and techniques to effectively make the MEA are needed to achieve this Therefore three work packages are defined: 1: electrocatalyst i.e. understand the role of catalyst properties for Ni, Co and Au catalyst supported on carbon on performance of electrodes made out of them for oxygen reduction to H2O2. Based on the understanding improved electrodes and MEA will be made and reaction conditions varied to arrive at the optimal electrode and reaction conditions. 2: membrane i.e., the fabrication of a novel highly stable AEX membranes based on polyelectrolyte complexes which are stable under the reaction conditions applied i.e. under basic and oxidizing conditions. These membranes need to be optimized for permselectivity, resistance and water transport. Finally these membranes need to be incorporated in the MEA. 3: system development and integration i.e., integrating various elements thereby intensifying the electrochemical production process, while ensuring efficient and stable production of hydrogen peroxide. The major sub-objectives are: a) optimization of the solid polymer electrolyte filled centre compartment Integration of electrode with adjacent ion exchange membrane to membrane electrode assemblies; b) Modelling of mass and energy transport of the electrochemical process and c) techno-economic evaluation.