ForestSpeCs

Objectives

The overall objective of the FORESTSPECS project is to develop and encourage sustainable, environmentally responsible, and economically attractive management of natural resources based on side products from the forest and forest-based industries. The ultimate target of the project is to replace certain large-volume, oil-based chemical materials with bio-renewable and innovative products based on wood-related residues and humic substances. The aim is to find feasible ways to produce high value added, bioactive compounds such as pharmaceuticals and biological plant protection products (BPPP), as well as to develop new environmentally benign industrial chemicals and polymers. Furthermore, one of the main targets is to create economically attractive options for the total usage of processed wood and peat residues either as a whole, or after extraction of the main bioactive fractions, for example in soil remediation.

The scientific objectives are:

to develop new synthetic methods to modify compounds isolated from wood-related residues (e.g. betulin and suberin) as well as humic acids to obtain new bioactive compounds and environmentally benign industrial chemicals and polymers
to determine the biological activities, properties, and potential uses in various applications (e.g., in health, cosmetics, and plant protection) of the extractive fractions and purified compounds based on wood residues and peat, as well as synthesized derivatives of the compounds isolated from the processed wood and wood bark
to improve our understanding of the relationship between chemical structure of these compounds and their biological activity, in order to facilitate a more efficient design of bioactive molecules in the future
to establish the potential of wood bark as raw material for products needed in remediation of poor and/or arid soils, in order to facilitate agricultural production, and ultimately, to combat climate change and desertification
to examine the suitability of wood bark and peat as components in biotechnological processes aimed at remediation of contaminated soils

The technological objectives are:

to develop sustainable processes to separate and modify bioactive compounds from wood residues and peat as raw materials for value-added products such as pharmaceuticals and biological plant protection products
to develop transformation routes needed to produce new type of adhesives, coatings, lubricants, surfactants and chelating agents from wood residues and peat
to develop reliable methods for screening extractive fractions and isolated, identified substances from the wood and wood-related residues, for their efficacy as BPPP
to evaluate the technical properties and business potential of the processes and end-products, as well as the overall feasibility of the operations suggested