Newton Bhabha Industrial Waste: Integrated biorefinery for converting paper mill waste into chemical wealth (waste-2-wealth)

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India is the fastest growing paper market in the world (6% per annum; by 2024-25 Indian demand is projected to increase to 23.50 million MT). However, alongside this trend is the huge amount of industrial waste, especially lignocellulosic material that accumulates as part of this expanding industry. This proposal addresses a number of urgent problems relevant to India, including a) a strengthening of the countries economic position through the emerging bioeconomy, b) the need to tackle major and growing environmental waste management challenges and c) addressing countrywide poverty prevalence through new employment. Our team will develop an innovative biorefinery and commercial strategy to establish a demonstrator platform for the sustainable conversion of paper mill waste into high value chemicals. This platform will be used to drive sustainable expansion through commercial inward investment. This technology will lead to reduction in industrial waste/pollution, and improve value recovery from waste in the paper and pulp industry sector. The proposal will strengthen India's economic position, address major waste challenges and tackle rural poverty. The biorefinery is built from partner expertise in i) valorisation of waste feedstock (India); ii) use of bioengineered strains for fragrance production at industrial levels, and feedstock utilisation (UK); iii) commercial expertise in this market sector (UK/India). The innovation is found in unifying existing technologies to form the biorefinery concept, enabling distributed, green, scalable and sustainable manufacture of chemicals from major paper mill waste streams. The biorefinery will drive inward investment to strengthen India's economic position, address major waste challenges and tackle poverty prevalence through job creation.