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 language | English |
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Article number | 4456 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-14 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Applied Sciences (Switzerland) |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 20 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 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