ALFAFUELS proposes a novel Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) production technology that can play a major role in the decarbonisation of the aviation sector by replacing conventional fossil fuels in mid and long-term. ALFAFUELS contributes to climate change mitigation, energy transition, and on the establishment of a circular bio-based economy by providing a direct capture and utilisation of CO2, by developing cost-effective and sustainable technological solutions in all process steps, and by providing integration possibilities with other sectors. The project’s aim is to tackle the key challenges preventing SAF technologies to reach technological maturity and commercialisation such as the high current production cost, sustainability issues associated with their production, technological constraints (yields and efficiencies). To that end, ALFAFUELS includes targeted technological breakthroughs, such as the microbial production of a volatile fuel precursor from CO2, the upgrade to kerosene-type jet fuel molecules in ambient conditions using solar light-driven photochemistry, and the valorisation of all cell components in a biorefinery approach to co-produce starch and H2 (indirectly from CO2) as an important intermediate. The proposed technological novelties are combined with modelling approaches to maximize efficiencies, to optimize the overall process regarding cost and energy consumption and to evaluate the process with combined techno-economic and life cycle assessments. The project lifts the production technologies at TRL5, by including the design of novel cost-efficient bioreactors, pilot scale trials on real, industrially relevant CO2 streams and evaluation of the produced molecules against ASTM standards. To further accelerate the upscaling of ALFAFUELS, we analyse the systemic barriers and opportunities for the implementation of SAF technologies in Europe, using modelling tools and capitalizing from the participation of industrial end-users in the consortium.

Microalgae are a source of secondary metabolites useful as new bioactive compounds. Activity of these compounds against bacterial pathogens and biofilm formation has not been determined yet. Biofilm formation is especially important in infections and tissue inflammation related to implants and catheters. These problems finally cause a release of the implant, which must be removed and replaced by a new one, entailing an increase in antibiotic consumption, together with a health costs of about 50,000-90,000 € per infection episode. Taking both problems in account, the search of new antimicrobial agents that will be effective against the bacteria in their two ways of life, planktonic and biofilm stage, is a priority need in the clinical practice. For this reason, the overall objective of NOMORFILM project is to search for antibiofilm compounds isolated from microalgae that will be useful in the treatment of this kind of infections and could be incorporated in the manufacturing of medical prosthetic devices. For this purpose, 4,000 microalgae species will be deeply screened specifically for new antibacterial and antibiofilm molecules. Structural elucidation of bioactive compounds from these extracts will assure that only new chemical entities, therefore with anticipated new mechanisms of action, will arise to further project stages, those including toxicity tests and animal models. This project also addresses the biosynthesis of the targeted bioactive compounds in sustainable microalgae co-cultures, diminishing cultivation costs by mimicking natural aquatic ecosystems. Most industrially interesting antibiofilm molecules will be incorporated into nanoparticles in order to develop manufacturing methodologies able to incorporate these compounds into real prosthetic devices matrixes. Marketing of results are assured by the presence of diverse SMEs along the manufacture and distribution of prosthetic devices, and the corresponding consortium agreements with respect to IPRs