OLEAF4VALUE is a research and innovation action (RIA) funded by the European Union (H2020 -JTI-BBI) focused on tackling the problem generated by olive biomass through the development of a complete olive leaf upcycling system.

This three-year project that will develop a complete valorization system for the olive leaf. 4,5 million ton of olive leaves are produced annually in the world by the olive oil industry, a key industry in southern Europe and along the Mediterranean coast (Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Slovenia, among others). This recalcitrant biomass represents a problem for both the farmers and the whole olive oil industry, who need to remove it from the fields and the olive oil mills. This biomass is nowadays burnt in the fields, given to the cattle or, in some cases, combusted to produce energy.

OLEAF4VALUE will put together a competitive consortium (sixteen partners from nine different countries) of highly experienced partners devoted to the complete valorization of this new underexploited biomass. The consortium will address all the stages of the value chain: raw material, biorefining, post-extraction technologies, market validation and sustainability assessment.

The goal of OLEAF4VALUE is to set up the basis of a smart value chain based on a newly developed 4.0 concept: Smart Dynamic Multi-Valorization-Route Biorefinery (SAMBIO) for the cascade valorization of the olive leaf biomass according to its physicochemical composition, particularly modulated by specific pretreatments to produce target products. In this context, at the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança. CeDRI-IPB collaborates with CIMO-IPB in order to digitize and automate processes in order to guarantee systematic and optimized solutions.

Funded by: Bio Based Industries Consortium and European Union's Horizon 2020

Consortium: Sixteen partners from nine different countries (coordinator: NATAC BIOTECH SL)

Duration: July 2021 - July 2024

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