• Sugarcane Waste to Tackle Tooth Decay, Obesity and Diabetes
    Dr David Bryant and Dr Sian Davies of the BIOREVIEW team at IBERS

News & Views

Sugarcane Waste to Tackle Tooth Decay, Obesity and Diabetes

Feb 16 2019

A new collaborative research project between the UK and India led by Aberystwyth University, aims to transform waste streams from the Indian sugarcane industry into a range of valuable new products that can address tooth decay, obesity and diabetes.

BIOREVIEW is a £1.99M Newton Bhabha Fund Industrial Waste Challenge project, a collaboration of scientific research and business from India and the UK in order to create innovative solutions to global challenges.

Dr David Bryant, who leads BIOREVIEW and the team at the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences said: “India is the world’s second largest producer of sugar and consumes the largest amount of sugar.

The Indian sugarcane industry generates waste in the form of unwanted residual liquid, known as spent wash, from bioethanol production; and dry pulpy residue left after the extraction of juice from sugar cane, known as bagasse.

We are working together to develop innovative, economically viable, industrial biotechnology processes that will create value added products from this waste.”

It has been predicted that products worth over £12bn could be produced from the spent wash, and that xylitol, a diabetic compatible sweetener that prevents tooth decay, to be produced from bagasse could be worth £1bn by 2025.

Microcrystalline cellulose that has uses in food and pharmaceuticals will also be produced from residual bagasse. Other applications include production of depth filters that can help clean up polluted or contaminated water sources.

The integrated BIOREVIEW bio-refining processes that will be progressed in this project will be developed into a business justification for the Indian sugarcane industry to invest in transforming their waste streams into a range of commercially valuable commodities.

The overall BIOREVIEW vision involves integrating advanced bio-refining processes into Indian sugar mills to result in economic, environmental and societal benefit to both industry and the wider Indian society.


Digital Edition

Lab Asia 31.2 April 2024

April 2024

In This Edition Chromatography Articles - Approaches to troubleshooting an SPE method for the analysis of oligonucleotides (pt i) - High-precision liquid flow processes demand full fluidic c...

View all digital editions

Events

Microbiology Society Annual Conference 2024

Apr 08 2024 Edinburgh 2024

analytica 2024

Apr 09 2024 Munich, Germany

ChemBio Finland 2024

Apr 10 2024 Helsinki, Finland

Analytica Anacon India & IndiaLabExpo

Apr 15 2024 Mumbai, India

Analitika Expo 2024

Apr 16 2024 Moscow, Russia

View all events