Direct fermentation route for sustainable plastics and superabsorbent polymers

Research Project, 2023 – 2025

One of the grand challenges of our society today is to replace fossil-based production of chemicals and fuels by sustainable alternatives with a lower carbon footprint and less environmental impact. Acrylic acid is a versatile building block for both commodity and specialty chemicals, including plastics, coatings, paints, superabsorbent polymers. Bio-based production of acrylic acid has been studied via combining fermentation with chemo-catalytic procedures. However, wide-spread usage of renewable acrylic acid is hampered due to limited environmental gains and additional costs with chemical catalysts and purification steps in these chemo-catalytic processes. The aim of this project is therefore to develop a yeast-based fermentation route for direct production of acrylic acid from renewable resources, such as cellulosic biomass.