Georgia produces about 70 thousand tonnes of mandarins annually, 50% of which gets exported. Local fruit juice industry utilizes most of the mandarins left in the country to produce mandarin juice. However, the leftover mandarin pomace causes serious environmental issues as the piled up pomace waste leaches acidic decomposting products as well as essential oils into the environment. Mandarin pomace is a rich source of fine chemicals and the project will develop environmentally friendly technologies to extrat those chemicals from the waste.
Studies on semi-industrial scale extraction of hemp, optimisation of conditions.
Destillation of extracts, CBD crystallization. CBD fractionation by
flush-chromatography.
Wood is the most abundant form of biomass used by industry and is the source of the three major biolpolymers in nature – cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. While cellulose is responsible for about 40-50% of the dry weight of wood, lignin content varies from 10% to about 35% across species. For decades, lignin has been seen as a bothersome side-product that needs removal at all cost. However, in the last decade, due to its polyphenolic nature, lignin has emerged to the focus of attention as a renewable alternative to crude oil based chemistry. The project aims to develop technologies for the extaction and fractionation of lignin and cellulose derived from low valorization level bleached chemi-thermomechanical pulp or industrial wood-waste. The goal of the project is to develop practical and environmentally friendly functional materials (e.g. thermo isolators and surfactants). Also, the project will identify and characterize novel industrial enzymes from extreme thermophilic organisms.
Recognitions
Swiss Baltic Net Graduate Award for internationally outstanding scientific publication in the professional magazine „Electrophoresis”