A company that helped design food systems for astronauts is now tackling a very different challenge, dairy waste here on Earth. Take Root Bio has worked with Heriot-Watt University to turn salty whey into bioethanol.
Salty whey is a high-volume by-product of cheese production. It’s notoriously hard to manage. The UK generates around 95,000 tonnes of it each year from cheddar and similar cheeses. Its mix of milk sugars and high salt content makes disposal costly and difficult.
The Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre connected the two organisations through its industry network. Together, they explored how sugars in salty whey could be converted through a bio-based process. The process also leaves behind a secondary stream that could potentially be recovered for other uses.
Take Root Bio’s approach draws on its roots in biosphere engineering, originally developed for growing food in space. Heriot-Watt brought expertise in circular economy solutions and food by-product valorisation. The partnership treats salty whey as a resource rather than a waste problem.
Kirk Siderman-Wolter, founder of Take Root Bio, said the company has always asked what waste materials could become instead. He said the same principles used for space food systems apply well on Earth. Turning a costly waste stream into something valuable benefits both dairy producers and the environment, he said.
Dr Liz Fletcher of IBioIC said finding new uses for waste materials is one of industrial biotechnology’s biggest opportunities. She praised the project for approaching a familiar problem differently.
Researchers at Heriot-Watt, including Dr Jane White and Dr Shiwen Zhuang, said the project shows how bio-based processes can recover value from food and drink by-products while easing disposal pressures.
Take Root Bio is also exploring mobile production units that could operate closer to dairy producers, reducing transport needs. Looking ahead, the company plans to test similar techniques on other food and agricultural by-products, including fruit and vegetable waste, and to capture fermentation gases like methane and hydrogen for future food production systems.
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