About REVALOR

Circular Valorisation of Agri-Food Side Streams into High-Value Bio-Based Ingredients

The Challenge

The European agri-food sector produces an estimated 88 million tonnes of organic side streams every year. Despite their inherent nutritional and functional value, the vast majority of these residues — olive pomace, tomato pomace, citrus peel, cereal bran, and dairy whey — are currently managed as waste through low-value incineration, anaerobic digestion or landfill disposal.

This represents a massive loss of potential value: bio-based proteins, polyphenols, dietary fibres and bioactive peptides that could substitute petroleum-derived ingredients in food, cosmetics and nutraceutical formulations. At the same time, it generates unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions and places a financial burden on food processors.

The technical barriers to valorisation are well-understood — inefficient extraction processes, regulatory uncertainty, absence of food-grade quality benchmarks, and lack of validated sustainability data — but they have not yet been addressed in an integrated, cross-sectoral manner.

Our Approach

REVALOR addresses these barriers through an integrated biorefinery concept that applies mild, aqueous-only enzymatic fractionation to simultaneously recover multiple high-value fractions from each substrate. The approach is designed from the outset to be:

  • Scalable — validated at laboratory, pilot (50 L) and pre-industrial (500 L) scale within the project duration.
  • Solvent-free — all processes use water as the sole processing medium, eliminating organic solvent use and associated regulatory hurdles.
  • Circular — process water is recycled within the loop; solid residues after fractionation are evaluated for soil amendment or biogas applications.
  • Regulation-ready — ingredient dossiers are prepared in parallel with process development, targeting Novel Food, cosmetic and nutraceutical regulatory frameworks.
  • Evidence-based — a rigorous life cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis are conducted at each scale-up step to ensure genuine environmental and economic advantage over baseline scenarios.

Project Objectives

  1. Develop and validate scalable biorefinery processes

    Develop and validate at pilot scale (≥50 L) at least three aqueous enzymatic fractionation protocols achieving protein yield ≥60% and polyphenol recovery ≥65% from four agri-food side stream substrates by Month 24.

  2. Characterise and benchmark recovered ingredients

    Fully characterise (nutritional, functional and safety profile) at least eight bio-based ingredient fractions and demonstrate technical parity with commercial reference ingredients in at least two application matrices by Month 36.

  3. Demonstrate environmental and economic superiority

    Demonstrate through ISO 14040/14044 LCA that REVALOR biorefinery routes reduce global warming potential by ≥50% compared to conventional side stream disposal for all four substrates by Month 42.

  4. Establish a clear regulatory pathway

    Prepare at least two complete novel food or cosmetic ingredient dossiers ready for regulatory submission, and publish a publicly available regulatory decision-tree tool for bio-based ingredient developers by Month 48.

  5. Maximise dissemination, exploitation and impact

    Publish at least 15 peer-reviewed open-access articles, achieve TRL 5 for at least two ingredient-process combinations, and engage at least 500 agri-food industry stakeholders through dissemination activities by project end.

Expected Impact

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Environmental Impact

Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from agri-food waste; elimination of organic solvent use; full circular use of process water.

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Scientific Impact

New enzymatic fractionation protocols published as open science; comprehensive safety and functional datasets for four novel ingredient categories.

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Industrial Impact

Two regulatory-ready ingredient dossiers; validated pilot-scale processes transferable to industrial partners; SME cascade funding for technology uptake.

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Policy Impact

Evidence base for EU bioeconomy strategy and Novel Food regulation reform; open regulatory decision-tree tool for SMEs.