Technology Transfer Department

Application sectors

Problem to solve

The METROFOOD-IT infrastructure Materials Technologies for the Agro-Industry, based at the Brindisi Research Centre and operating in synergy with the technology hall of the Casaccia Research Centre, is a technological platform that offers a set of processing technologies mainly applied to agri-food supply chains that generate by products or waste (such as whey and ricotta cheese water, plant extracts, beverages, and vegetation water from the olive oil, wine, and tomato processing chains). These technologies enable the fractionation of mixtures (solutions or suspensions), allowing the recovery of liquid streams in which specific families of biomolecules (proteins, sugars, active ingredients, polyphenols, vitamins, and metabolites) are separated and concentrated for further reuse. Food companies often face significant costs related to the management and in some cases the disposal of by-products, waste, and effluents generated during primary processing. This infrastructure is unique.

Description

The METROFOOD-IT infrastructure for materials technologies for the agro-industry present in the Research Centre (hereinafter CR) of Brindisi, in synergy with the technology hall in the Casaccia CR, uses pilot-scale plants to operate in Micro-, Ultra-, Nano-, and Reverse Osmosis modes. They can house ceramic and polymeric membranes. They can be used to develop separation strategies for unknown liquid matrices. The platform is able to operate on a pilot scale and on liquids extracted from complex matrices to then be homogenized at high pressure, filtered and fractionated. The extracted biomolecules can undergo fermentation processes to create new products or be used to create devices and in general biomaterials, thus valorizing waste and liquid waste that companies in particular in the agri-food sector often have in large quantities, mitigating the environmental impact.

Research group involved