Projects
Blue Synergy actively participates in international R&D projects with the aim to support private and public organizations in their transition towards a sustainable future. We have a strong commitment with the development of market-oriented research and technological projects, aimed to promote circular economy and life cycle thinking. In this way we do our part to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the European Green Deal objectives.
SECRETed is a H2020 project funded under the FNR-11-2020 topic, aiming to fully exploit aquatic biotechnology for the production of novel industrial products for the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, agrochemical, marine and chemistry sectors. The SECRETed project aims to develop novel molecules with tailor-made properties by the combination of biosynthetic genes of amphiphilic compounds (biosurfactants and siderophores) produced by marine and extremophilic microorganisms.
The fourth Industrial Revolution is based on the deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT), which interconnects autonomous mobile devices with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity and access to knowledge. In the future, our devices will become more and more connected. However, this will require environment-friendly, battery-less and efficient power supply solutions in computing, sensing and human-machine interaction. To tackle this issue, the EU-funded NANO-EH project aims to use nanomaterials in advanced device engineering for smart energy harvesting/storage submodules that are tailored for the specific needs of stand-alone, mobile or portable uses.
NewWave will contribute to building a circular economy by introducing sustainable raw materials in different manufacturing lines, replacing toxic chemicals and lowering the environmental footprint of the products. The raw materials are obtained from thermochemical fractionation of biomass. This process converts biomass residues by fast pyrolysis into Fast Pyrolysis Bio-Oil (FPBO). Subsequently, the FPBO is fractionated -based on chemical functionality- yielding a reactive lignin fraction and a sugar-rich fraction, both being excellent starting materials to produce sustainable, bio-based chemicals & materials. The selected product lines fully exploit the unique chemical functionalities already present in biomass residues and organic waste streams. Waste water treatment and water re-use is integral part of the concept.
BIOSYSMO is a 48-month action that will develop a computationally-assisted framework for designing and optimizing synergistic biosystems combining the required pathways and traits to achieve the most efficient degradation and sequestration of pollutant mixtures. These biosystems will comprise combinations of bacteria, fungi and plants containing the natural or engineered pathways required for pollutants degradation and identified based on a computationally-assisted analysis. BIOSYSMO will take advantage of the high natural microbial diversity by screening samples from polluted sites and locations affected by diffuse pollution to identify natural microorganisms already present and able to metabolize the target pollutants. The search will be expanded to microorganisms previously identified and characterized by applying data mining tools to genomic and metagenomic data available in public repositories.
Cities need support to implement their Sustainable Action Plans in line with the ambitious and stringent regulations towards a zero carbon Europe. The EYES HEARTS HANDS Urban Revolution (EHHUR) project will develop and test a co-designed methodological structure to support cities in their built environment transformation by using already existing good practices and complementing them with the New European Bauhaus and EU Missions principles. 7 Lighthouse demonstrators will be involved across EU and Associated countries (DK, EL, BE, PT, TK, HR, IT).
EHHUR will tackle socio-economic and cultural challenges through relevant case studies facing social segregation, vulnerable residents (experiencing energy poverty), coal transition, depopulated and degraded historic centres.
Flexible electronics have been around for several decades and are the basis for electronic devices in applications that require bending, rolling, folding, and stretching, properties that cannot be fulfilled by conventional electronics. However, their emitted power levels are only in the range of up to 500mW and there is no current flexible technology that can satisfy upcoming needs like conformal antenna for avionic radars and light weight flexible antenna for satellite IoT that require power levels approaching or exceeding 10W. NANOMAT comes to fill in this emerging technological gap through the inauguration of the new domain of “Flexible power RF nanoelectronics”. An innovative heterogeneous technological platform comprising material and fabrication novelties in carbon-based electronics and thermoelectrics, wide band gap semiconductor based MMICs, RF MEMS and acoustic sensors will deliver flexible components and circuits. The concept will be demonstrated through two prototypes of escalating innovation and complexity, starting from a flexible hybrid proof of concept for satellite IoT at Ka-band and climaxing with a fully monolithic flexible power RF transceiver for next generation avionic radars at X-band.
VALORISH is a 42-month action that aims to develop a computationally-assisted methodology for the design and implementation of a biorefinery with a cascade approach to valorise waste and by-products from the fishing industry at TRL 5. The target portfolio of products will be fish oil, fish protein hydrolysates, bacteriocins, pigments, vitamins, collagen and calcium-rich powder, targeting food products, additives, supplements and nutraceuticals. The cascade conversion processes will vary with the feedstock heterogeneity, comprising pretreatment, oil green extraction, proteolytic fermentation (protein hydrolysis), fermentation with hydrolysates as substrate, and a portfolio of downstream processes. The proteolytic fermentation will be guided by computational biology, using models to search new candidate enzyme-producing bacteria. The fish protein hydrolysates obtained in the fermentation will be used, first, as food supplement due to their bioactive properties, and second, as substrate for supporting a second fermentation, to obtain high-value bioproducts, namely bacteriocins and astaxanthin, as food additives, and vitamin B12, as food supplement.
