{"id":179902,"date":"2026-06-11T07:22:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T05:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=179902"},"modified":"2026-08-12T13:26:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T11:26:35","slug":"eu-project-aims-to-make-breakthrough-in-sustainable-chemical-manufacture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/eu-project-aims-to-make-breakthrough-in-sustainable-chemical-manufacture\/","title":{"rendered":"EU project aims to make breakthrough in sustainable chemical manufacture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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In search of the optimal microbial strain: researchers in the CarboNcare project are developing bacteria that sustainably produce chemical base materials.
\u00a9 Charit\u00e9 | Stefan Hristov<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Plastics, medicines, cosmetics \u2013 there are very few everyday products that do not rely on using fossil resources. A European research team led by Charit\u00e9 \u2013 Universit\u00e4tsmedizin Berlin is now aiming to revolutionize this cornerstone of the chemical industry: as part of the CarboNcare project, scientists are developing bacteria that can produce important chemical base materials from sustainable methanol \u2013 thereby replacing fossil resources. The project is funded by a \u20ac3.1 million Pathfinder Grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC), which specifically supports groundbreaking innovations with high market potential.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chemical industry continues to be heavily dependent on finite resources such as crude oil, natural gas, and coal. Many alternative approaches rely on sugar and biomass, but growing these requires valuable land and competes with food production. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cOur goal is to decouple chemical production from both fossil and plant-based resources,\u201d says Dr. Steffen Lindner-Mehlich, scientist at the Institute of Biochemistry at Charit\u00e9 and head of the CarboNcare project<\/strong>, which is now underway. \u201cOur aim is to make the chemical industry more sustainable, without jeopardizing food security. In order to achieve this, we\u2019re pulling every trick in the biotechnology playbook.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The researchers\u2019 aim is to enable a CO2 circular economy: in other words, using the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere \u2013 for example, when a plastic product is incinerated at the end of its life cycle \u2013 as a base material for producing that very same product. In an ideal scenario, this would create a closed carbon cycle without any additional emissions. The first step on this path is already within reach today: Methanol \u2013 a key base material in the chemical industry \u2013 can already be made from CO\u2082 captured from the atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bacterial factories are intended to produce lactate, succinate, and butanediol<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The scientists in the CarboNcare project are now focusing on the second step, namely converting methanol into important intermediates such as lactate, succinate, and 2,3-butanediol. The industry harnesses these intermediates to produce medicines (e.g., tablet coatings), food (e.g., preservatives and flavor enhancers), bioplastics, cosmetics (e.g., lipsticks, creams), and rubber for tire production. The project aims to engineer bacteria to carry out this methanol conversion \u2014 effectively creating tiny biological factories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe are genetically reprogramming both of the bacterial strains already at work in the industrial arena \u2013 Escherichia coli <\/em>and Pseudomonas putida<\/em> \u2013 in such a way that they \u201cfeed on\u201d methanol and excrete lactate, succinate, or butanediol,\u201d explains Steffen Lindner-Mehlich.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That is easier said than done, however, as the energy that bacteria obtain from feeding would usually mainly be used to support their own growth, rather than producing chemical products. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThat is why we link bacterial growth directly to the production of the desired chemicals,\u201d adds the project lead.<\/strong> \u201cIn this way, if the bacteria want to grow, they need to produce the target molecule at the same time. This approach not only increases the yield, but also makes the process more robust and predictable, which is a decisive factor for industrial use.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Optimization for industrial use<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In order to comprehensively reconfigure the bacteria’s metabolic pathways, the project team plans to initially simulate the biochemical processes on a computer before making the necessary modifications to the bacterial organisms. \u201cAlongside molecular biology, we are also keeping industrial scalability in mind,\u201d stresses Steffen Lindner-Mehlich. The fermentation process will therefore be designed so that it can operate reliably on an industrial scale later down the line, and it will also be analyzed with regard to its environmental footprint and economic viability. The interdisciplinary expertise required to achieve this brings together eight European partners from science and industry within the CarboNcare project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe want to develop a seriously viable and sustainable alternative to the established production methods in the chemical industry,\u201d emphasizes Steffen Lindner-Mehlich.<\/strong> \u201cSo that plastics, cosmetics, and other everyday products can be manufactured in a climate-neutral manner in the future.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The demand for basic chemicals shows just how great the potential of this approach could be: the global lactate market alone totaled around \u20ac2.9 billion in 2021 and continues to grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Contact<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Steffen Lindner-Mehlich<\/a>
Institute of Biochemistry<\/a>
Charit\u00e9 \u2013\u00a0Universit\u00e4tsmedizin Berlin
Tel: +49 30 450 528 317<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About CarboNcare<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The CarboNcare project aims to develop a new platform for the climate-neutral production of basic chemicals. It is funded by an EIC Pathfinder Grant and coordinated by Dr. Steffen Lindner-Mehlich (Charit\u00e9). Additional partners in the consortium are the Max Planck Society and DECHEMA Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (Germany), Leiden University (Netherlands), the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission \u2013 CEA (France), the Technical University of Denmark \u2013 DTU (Denmark), IN SRL (Italy), and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland \u2013 HES-SO (Switzerland).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About EIC Pathfinder Grants<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Through its Pathfinder Grants, the European Innovation Council (EIC) supports radically new technologies that have the potential to create new markets. To this end, funding is provided to visionary and high-risk projects in an early stage of development. EIC Pathfinder Grants are part of Horizon Europe, the EU\u2019s key funding program for research and innovation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plastics, medicines, cosmetics \u2013 there are very few everyday products that do not rely on using fossil resources. A European research team led by Charit\u00e9 \u2013 Universit\u00e4tsmedizin Berlin is now aiming to revolutionize this cornerstone of the chemical industry: as part of the CarboNcare project, scientists are developing bacteria that can produce important chemical base materials from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":179904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"As part of the CarboNcare project, funded from the European Innovation Council, scientists are developing bacteria that can produce important chemical base materials from sustainable methanol","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572,5571],"tags":[13383,6843,5796,10744,12330,10416,13718,10743],"supplier":[6953,331,13550,24610,621,11306,10780],"class_list":["post-179902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bio-based","category-co2-based","tag-bacteria","tag-biochemicals","tag-biotechnology","tag-carboncapture","tag-ccu","tag-circulareconomy","tag-methanol","tag-useco2","supplier-charite","supplier-dechema-gesellschaft-fuer-chemische-technik-und-biotechnologie-ev","supplier-european-innovation-council","supplier-horizon-europe","supplier-max-planck-gesellschaft","supplier-technical-university-of-denmark-dtu","supplier-university-of-leiden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179902"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179914,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179902\/revisions\/179914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179902"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=179902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}