HORIZON-JU-CBE-2026-RIA-01: Addressing separation and purification challenges in biorefineries

Bondalti Water offers an industrial integration and validation-oriented contribution to accelerate efficient, selective and scalable separation/purification technology platforms that can be integrated into existing and/or new biorefineries, while improving resource efficiency and reducing costs—in direct alignment with the expected outcomes of the topic.

What we can contribute (work packages / tasks)

• Process integration and scale-relevant validation support: engineering design, integration constraints, and performance verification to help demonstrate scalable separation/purification solutions in industrial or demo-scale use cases.

• Water- and solvent-smart separations: expertise on separation trains that increase efficiency using green solvents (including water) and minimise harsh solvents, and/or develop water-efficient process configurations.

• Process intensification and step reduction: design contributions to intensified separation schemes (e.g., hybrid trains, reduced unit operations, smarter recycles) to lower CAPEX/OPEX and debottleneck downstream processing.

• Energy and water consumption minimisation: system-level optimisation to reduce thermal/electrical energy and water use, including heat integration interfaces and closed-loop water management concepts relevant to industrial deployment.

• Upstream–downstream compatibility: ensure compatibility with upstream biorefinery operations, or co-develop solutions that address upstream and downstream challenges simultaneously (fouling/solids management, variability, stability).

• Product quality, purity and stability verification: monitoring plans and QA/QC methodologies to demonstrate that intermediates/products meet purity and stability needs for further conversion and application requirements (for both novel and established bio-based products).

• SSbD task implementation: contribute to the required task applying the Commission’s Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) framework to targeted biorefinery products obtained with the developed separation/purification processes.

• Digital monitoring and modelling: data pipelines and hybrid modelling to quantify separation performance (yield, selectivity, drift, robustness), enabling faster learning cycles and clearer scale-up decisions.

Keywords / tags

Biorefineries; downstream processing; separation platform; purification; process intensification; green solvents (incl. water); solvent minimisation; energy efficiency; water efficiency; scalability; demo/industrial validation (≥3 use cases); product purity & stability; SSbD; digital monitoring; hybrid modelling.