Analysis of seaweeds from South West England as a biorefinery feedstock

Tracey A. Beacham, Isobel S. Cole, Louisa S. DeDross, Sofia Raikova, Christopher J. Chuck, John Macdonald, Leopoldo Herrera, Tariq Ali, Ruth L. Airs, Andrew Landels, Michael J. Allen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

14 Citations (SciVal)
142 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Seaweeds contain many varied and commercially valuable components, from individual pigments and metabolites through to whole biomass, and yet they remain an under cultivated and underutilised commodity. Currently, commercial exploitation of seaweeds is predominantly limited to whole biomass consumption or single product extracts for the food industry. The development of a seaweed biorefinery, based around multiple products and services, could provide an important opportunity to exploit new and currently underexplored markets. Here, we assessed the native and invasive seaweeds on the South West coast of the UK to determine their characteristics and potential for exploitation through a biorefinery pipeline, looking at multiple components including pigments, carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and other metabolites.

Original languageEnglish
Article number4456
Pages (from-to)1-14
Number of pages14
JournalApplied Sciences (Switzerland)
Volume9
Issue number20
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Oct 2019

Funding

Special thanks to Laura Righetti for help with the phytohormone analysis, to George Littlejohn for his support and assistance with the Seale Hayne Educational Trust funding application and to Rosie Allen and Archie Allen for help with seaweed sampling. We would like to thank the Newton Fund and Innovate UKfor support through grant TSB 102732 entitled "Novel Agricultural Bioactives from Microalgae (NABAMA)"; the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and Innovate-UK for support through grant BB/N010396/1 entitled "Pilot Algal Lipids Manufacturing in the UK (PALM-UK)"; the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) for support through grant ENG3418 entitled "Establishing environmentally and commercially sustainable techniques for farming seaweed"; and the Seale Hayne Educational Trust for support through the grant "Identifying potential fertilizer and fuel products from coastal marine algae in the South West".

Keywords

  • Biorefinery
  • Carbohydrate
  • Heavy metal
  • Lipid
  • marine
  • Phytohormone
  • Pigment
  • Seaweed

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Materials Science
  • Instrumentation
  • General Engineering
  • Process Chemistry and Technology
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes

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