Introduction

Mar3Bio - Biorefinery and biotechnological exploitation of marine biomasses

Brown seaweed and crustacean shells are abundant but underexploited biomasses for producing high-value biomolecules.

Present limitations are:

  • Harsh and energy-consuming processing methods
  • Low amounts and quality of yields
  • Restricted areas of application

The Mar3Bio project aims to develop efficient and sustainable biorefinery processes, with the following main objectives:

  • Employ enzymatic treatment of biomasses for increased quality and yield products and environmentally friendly processing
  • Expand the product spectrum obtained from the biomasses (fucoidan, laminaran, etc.) and use chemoenzymatic modifications strategies to explore novel areas of application
  • Increase recovery of valuable components from waste streams in existing process lines (alginate production, shrimp shells from food industry

The current bottlenecks for a bio-refinery focusing on raw materials as brown algae and crustacean byproducts, are low yields, high energy consumption and incomplete spectrum of recovered biomolecules.

Mar3Bio will tackle this by a multidisciplinary and intersectorial R&D approach, and contribute to the development of efficient and sustainable bio-refinery processes for exploitation of the selected biomasses.

Project Coordinator:
Håvard Sletta, Mobil: 915 44 429, Epost:

Total Cost: € 3.378.920
Funding granted: € 2.181.032
Duration: 3 years (2016 - 2018)