Lignin is one of the most abundant organic polymers on Earth and it's often said that you can make anything out of it —except money.
Now, a team featuring AIBN researcher Dr Birgitta Ebert is set to challenge that notion, having secured $250,000 from the Queensland government to position this woody biomass as a key plank in the $15 billion market for sustainable rubbers, adhesives, and coatings.
The latest round of funding through the Qld-Germany Bioeconomy Collaborative Science Program has just been unveiled, and Dr Ebert is among the winners.
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Sign up todayAlongside Dr Muxina Konarova from the UQ School of Chemical Engineering and colleagues from Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology Marburg in Germany, Dr Ebert will spend the next three years exploring sustainable methods of converting lignin into valuable biochemicals.
Lignin, Dr Ebert says, is found in plants and serves as a kind of natural glue, maintaining the structural integrity of plants and providing rigidity.
When it is processed correctly, lignin can also be used to make butadiene – an important precursor to synthetic rubber.
Dr Ebert says the aim of the project is to create sustainable pathway for valuable chemical production that benefits both Queensland's agricultural sector, and Germany's chemical industries.
“We aim to optimise the chemical depolymerisation of lignin into low molecular weight compounds,” she says.
“Microorganisms are then being developed to efficiently transform these lignin monomers into butadiene, further facilitated by novel enzymes developed by the German partners through synthetic biology and enzyme engineering platforms.”
The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will provide €500,000 to the German partners for this project, while there will be an exchange of staff and students between research groups during the project to share expertise.
Birgitta – herself from Germany – has been a researcher with the AIBN since 2019.
Her research focuses on developing biotechnology concepts to address critical challenges such as pollution, climate change and overexploitation of natural resources.
