Short project description

Agriculture and the processing of agricultural products releases considerably large amounts of remaining materials in Greece as well as in Hungary; these materials should be considered as residual rather than as waste materials, and they should be further utilized as carbon sources for biotechnological or chemical processes. They are abundant and therefore rather cheap; indeed, in some cases they have a negative commercial value. Goals of the proposed research are: (a) to reveal possibilities of valorization of important agro-industrial residues, i.e. raw glycerol (produced during biodiesel production process) and olive mill wastewaters (OMWs), used as substrates in biotechnological processes, and to identify products, which can be produced from these residual compounds, with emphasis on the production of new biofuels, such as single cell oils (SCOs) and bio-hydrogen and (b) to reduce the effluents’ toxicity in order to use them in the biological production of foods (e.g. for crops’ irrigation-hydrofertilization, for compost’ maceration etc).