Project Portugal 2030

Summary

HIPERBIOTEX aims to create advanced, eco-friendly, and integrated bioprocesses for producing HIgh-PERformance BIOTEXtiles, thereby contributing to low-impact textile dyeing and finishing operations. We intend to implement circular and scalable platforms that incorporate renewable feedstocks as starting textile materials (six natural/bio-based man-made fibers), dyes, enzymes, and other biological additives. These platforms will utilize processing technologies using solvents/chemicals derived from renewable sources, which can be recirculated into the system after use, ultimately resulting in high-quality and reproducible biotextiles. HIPERBIOTEX seeks to overcome the current issues of biotextiles by developing innovative bio-strategies to enhance their stability and durability, focusing particularly on dyeing and finishing. Our approach integrates these two key operations with the preceding and subsequent stages and includes environmental and economic assessments of the proposed technologies (cf. overall scheme of HIPERBIOTEX in attached Fig. 1). To demonstrate the feasibility of implementing a bio-strategy for the textile sector and accomplishing the main goal, our research proposal includes a comprehensive plan comprising six strategic tasks aligned with the following six aims (A): A1. Characterize natural or bio-based man-made fibers, particularly those that can be sourced from natural endogenous resources in the central region of Portugal. A2. Identify and characterize dyes, auxiliaries, and additives of bio-based origin that can replace/substitute restricted or concerning substances in the textile industry. A3. Develop and apply more efficient, milder and eco-friendlier dyeing operations using natural/biological fibers/fabrics, dyes, mordants, and other additives, as well as greener solvents, to obtain colored and appealing textiles. A4. Develop and apply more efficient, milder and eco-friendlier finishing operations for natural/biological crude and colored fibers/fabrics, using enzymes, organic acids, phenolics, lignosulfonates, and other biomolecules, to obtain stable and durable biotextiles. A5. Design innovative, resource-efficient, and integrative dyeing and finishing platforms for producing biotextiles with improved fastness properties and low-environmental impact. A6. Assess the techno-economic and environmental sustainability of the innovative bio-based technologies designed, facilitating their scalability and industrial implementation. HIPERBIOTEX is a unique research proposal with complex scientific and technological challenges, involving an interdependent combination of scientific and technical tasks to be conducted at the CERES research center by a multidisciplinary yet complementary team. Our novel concepts/approaches primarily revolve around utilizing natural and renewable resources through bioprocesses to produce biotextiles, thereby replacing synthetic counterparts widely used in conventional processing. To achieve our ambitious research plan, we rely on the expertise of PI in Industrial Biotechnology, particularly in developing circular strategies for recovery of molecules from biological sources and the reuse of dyes from textile wastewaters. Moreover, our team comprises experts in environmental microbiology, biotechnology, pulp, fiber and materials fields, data and computational modeling, techno-economic analysis, and life-cycle assessment, complemented by a solid background in Chem. Eng. among most team members.