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INNOVATION
Mediated electron transfer to biocatalytic beads for enhancing robustness and current densities in bioelectrocatalytic processes
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Market Maturity: Exploring
These are innovations that are actively exploring value creation opportunities. Learn more
Market Creation Potential
This innovation was assessed by the JRC’s Market Creation Potential indicator framework as having a Noteworthy” level of Market Creation Potential. Only innovations that are showing multiple signals of market creation potential are assigned a value under this indicator system. Learn more
Women-led innovation
A woman had a leadership role in developing this innovation in at least one of the Key Innovator organisations listed below.
Go to Market needs
Needs that, if addressed, can increase the chances this innovation gets to (or closer to) the market incude:
  • Prepare for Market entry
  • Secure capital
  • Scale-up market opportunities
Location of Key Innovators developing this innovation
Key Innovators
UN Sustainable Development Goals(SDG)
This innovation contributes to the following SDG(s)
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 2
End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

The UN explains: "It is time to rethink how we grow, share and consume our food.

If done right, agriculture, forestry and fisheries can provide nutritious food for all and generate decent incomes, while supporting people-centred rural development and protecting the environment.

Right now, our soils, freshwater, oceans, forests and biodiversity are being rapidly degraded. Climate change is putting even more pressure on the resources we depend on, increasing risks associated with disasters such as droughts and floods. Many rural women and men can no longer make ends meet on their land, forcing them to migrate to cities in search of opportunities.

A profound change of the global food and agriculture system is needed if we are to nourish today’s 815 million hungry and the additional 2 billion people expected by 2050.

The food and agriculture sector offers key solutions for development, and is central for hunger and poverty eradication."

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 6
Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

The UN explains: "Clean water is a basic human need, and one that should be easily accessible to all. There is sufficient fresh water on the planet to achieve this. However, due to poor infrastructure, investment and planning, every year millions of people — most of them children — die from diseases associated with inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene."

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 7
Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

The UN explains: "Energy is central to nearly every major challenge and opportunity the world faces today. Be it for jobs, security, climate change, food production or increasing incomes, access to energy for all is essential.

Transitioning the global economy towards clean and sustainable sources of energy is one of our greatest challenges in the coming decades. Sustainable energy is an opportunity – it transforms lives, economies and the planet."

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 8
Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

The UN explains: "Roughly half the world’s population still lives on the equivalent of about US$2 a day. And in too many places, having a job doesn’t guarantee the ability to escape from poverty. This slow and uneven progress requires us to rethink and retool our economic and social policies aimed at eradicating poverty."

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 9
Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

The UN explains: "Investments in infrastructure – transport, irrigation, energy and information and communication technology – are crucial to achieving sustainable development and empowering communities in many countries. It has long been recognized that growth in productivity and incomes, and improvements in health and education outcomes require investment in infrastructure."

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 12
Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

The UN explains: "Sustainable consumption and production is about promoting resource and energy efficiency, sustainable infrastructure, and providing access to basic services, green and decent jobs and a better quality of life for all. Its implementation helps to achieve overall development plans, reduce future economic, environmental and social costs, strengthen economic competitiveness and reduce poverty.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 13
Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

The UN explains: "Affordable, scalable solutions are now available to enable countries to leapfrog to cleaner, more resilient economies. The pace of change is quickening as more people are turning to renewable energy and a range of other measures that will reduce emissions and increase adaptation efforts."

The EU-funded Research Project
This innovation was developed under the Horizon Europe project ECOMO with an end date of 31/10/2026
  • Read more about this project on CORDIS
Description of Project ECOMO
The access to platform chemicals made of CO2 and nitrogen sources as starting materials via sustainable processes requires radical innovations. Driven by the global need of existing and growing markets, combined technologies that make use of renewable energy and the greenhouse gas CO2, and the use of nature’s catalysts such as enzymes and microbial cells through biotransformation steps are expected to have a game changing impact. Such catalysts can operate at ambient conditions at high atom efficiency through environmentally and energetically friendly processes. In this context ECOMO unites bioelectrocatalysis, biohybrid materials sciences, organic synthesis, technical microbiology, and process engineering for CO gas fermentation to acetate and a subsequent production of diamines. The fermentation steps will be achieved by specifically engineered microbial strains using CO as both the carbon source and energy carrier. As core novelty, the CO will be produced in situ apart from the electrode in the bulk solution from CO2 through a mediated electron transfer to free floating beads where CO-dehydrogenase is immobilized within the acetate forming bacterial cell culture. This will enable for the first time, full compatibility between electrochemical and biocatalytic processes. The synthetic aim is to yield high value-added diamine monomers as building blocks for established classes of polymeric materials. ECOMO will establish new bio based and biohybrid modules that will be directly compatible with the existing bioreactor infrastructure for the producing of specialty chemicals directly from CO2. By achieving the production of diamines as a proof-of-concept, ECOMO will foster further diversification to many other products made from CO2 and thus enhances the synthetic availability of needed building blocks for the chemical industry. The decoupling from fossil-sourced energy and raw materials underpin the timeliness of ECOMO.

Innnovation Radar's analysis of this innovation is based on data collected on 16/11/2024.
The unique id of this innovation in the European Commission's IT systems is: 131081