LUCRA – SustainabLe sUCcinic acid production using an integRAted electrochemical bioreactor and renewable feedstock

LUCRA will exploit EUs underutilized and abundant organic fractions of municipal solid waste and wood sidestream as feedstocks for the large scale production of a biobased building platform chemical at high yield with significant industrial end-user interest using a bioeconomy biorefinery approach.

It will provide optimized and scaleable breakthrough first of a kind innovative technology to create a step change from pilot to large scale integrated fermentation with novel electrochemical extraction of succinic acid (SA) at high TRL that will facilitate its industrial implementation, business models and market feasibility.

This will be achieved by the utilization of the mentioned renewable resources as feedstocks, which will reduce to a large extent the dependence on fossil resources and achieves at the same time a sustainable biobased SA production route.

To fit the needs of the industrial level, LUCRA will optimize the hydrolysis process of the different feedstocks to obtain efficient cellulose conversion. The crude sugar-rich hydrolysate will be used as fermentation feedstock coupled with an electrochemical membrane bioreactor for efficient extraction and production of biobased SA. To demonstrate the produced biobased SA will be able to compete their fossil-based counterparts, different polyurethane dispersions and resins will be produced at semi-industrial scale.