GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Proposals under this topic should:

• Scale up the energy and resource efficient production of anionic and/or cationic, and/or non-ionic and/or microbial bio-based surfactants. Concerning chemical structure, both dedicated and/or drop in structures are in scope.
• Address and assess feedstock-sourcing sustainability to produce bio-based surfactants. This could be done by replacing feedstock imported from outside the EU, with sustainably sourced EU feedstock, or by scaling up the valorisation of circular EU feedstock sources (e.g., agricultural and agro-industrial waste and residual streams, municipal waste, industrial food waste etc) .
• Include in the early design phase, key aspects such as biodegradability, mildness but also other desirable properties (e.g., antimicrobial), as relevant to meeting application-related, technical performance and environmental sustainability criteria. Moreover, testing against those aspects should be included, based on EU standards, as available.
• Assess and demonstrate safety benefits, considering both ecotoxicity and human toxicity aspects, while also taking into account the final products/formulations and/or other applications (e.g., process/manufacturing -related applications). End-products should aim to meet all relevant market and regulatory requirements (e.g., in terms of consumers safety and HS&E).
• Integrate a task to perform assessment based on the safe-and-sustainable-by-design (SSbD) framework, developed by the European Commission, for assessing the safety and sustainability of chemicals and materials. Under this context, projects are expected to contribute with and develop recommendations that can advance further the application of the SSbD framework.
• Analyse and prove techno-economic feasibility as well as commercial viability for the proposed bio-based surfactants, also providing a comparison to fossil-based and/or bio-based benchmarks, where these exist.
• Demonstrate and optimise the ‘robustness’ and impact of the bio-based surfactants by testing them in: i) final products/formulations. Validate therefore the developed bio-based surfactants for formulation (re)design, whilst investigating and understanding the complex physicochemical behaviour of the new surfactant molecules in mixtures/formulations, as well as their potential implications in end-product(s) scale up, performance and (physical, chemical) stability, and/or ii) final production/manufacturing processes, while meeting technical and holistic environmental performance criteria.