Australian BioRefining has been awarded an Australian Government innovation grant to manufacture by-products from sugar cane in a clean and cost-effective way using electrochemical reactor technology.
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane today announced Australian BioRefining, of
Evans Head on the NSW Central coast, had been awarded a $129,991 R&D Start
grant.
"The research and development being done by Australian BioRefining is likely to position the sugar sector as the first to use electrolytic cell technology for production in the food industry."
"This technology is already used in areas like minerals processing to recover valuable metals from waste water. The Australian BioRefining project is a novel production process for sugar by-products like gluconic acid."
"It's an innovative project with a substantial international market.
This sort of value-added product is used in the food and pharmaceutical industries
throughout the world but only produced in a handful of countries," said
Mr Macfarlane.
Australian BioRefining has lodged it's first provisional patent application covering the process they have developed for producing gluconic acid from cane sugar. The company is continuing scaling up the process and intends to establish a manufacturing facility, encompassing this and several other processes that it is developing, within 2 years.