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‘Management of waste as a resource’ was described in a European roadmap (COM (2011/571) as a milestone to be reached by 2020. On the one hand, there are diverse under-spent side-streams situated at the farmers and post-harvesting level as well as in the associated retail sector. On the other hand, there is a need for new resources, for instance proteins as alternative for soy proteins. InDIRECT, a three-year EU research project started November 2016, aims to develop biorefinery processes as part of new value chains to convert under-spent side-streams from the agro-sector and processing sector into useful marketable products. Cascading processes (recovery of multiple compounds from the same feedstock) are envisioned to increase the conversion efficiency and maximise the values of the feedstock. Direct bio-refiney of the biomass will be compared with indirect biorefinery. The latter refers to the two-step process that can cope with the heterogeneity of side-streams. In a first step the heterogenic feedstock is converted to homogenous biomass using insects. Insects are able to convert a variety of feedstocks into a more homogenous biomass, being their own biomass. In a second step, the insect biomass is further fractionated into a lipid, protein and chitin fraction, that all three have potential towards marketable end prod-ucts. The direct approach (without the insect conversion step) which is being explored for green leaves, is expected to be more seasonally variable compared to the indirect biorefinery appraoch, but generates a larger variety of compounds. The project foresees to process the derived fractions further into multiple marketable products for the feed, food and chemical sector. The multidisciplinary InDIRECT consortium consists of 9 partners from four countries (Belgium, The Netherlands, France & Italy), comprising 2 research organisations (VITO & University of Parma), 5 industrial partners (Nutrition sciences NV specialized in feed additives, two insect farms Millibeter & Proti-Farm R&D, IMPROVE specialized in plant proteins, and CHEMSTREAM focusing on chemical application), a non-profit organisa-tion that works in close contact with farmers and processing industry (Innovatiesteun-punt) and a project supporting company (Temperio). The project (www.bbi-indirect.eu) is coordinated by VITO. Session 1 Evaluation of the use of insects Bornimer Agrartechnische Berichte I Heft 97 I ISSN 0947-7314 24 This project has received funding from the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 720715.

Recently there has been increased interest in the use of insects for food and feed. This is not only because of the high protein content in insect biomass, as also the lipid frac-tion has value. Chitin, a third major compound in insects (present in the exoskeletons), can be beneficial for feed/food in very low concentrations but affects the digestibility and the utilization of its macro and micro-nutrients in the present concentration. The chitin removal of bee extract for example increased digestibility of the proteins from 71 to 94%. Hence there is a need for separation technologies. The extracted chitin, protein and fat fractions can further be processed for various applications besides food or feed. This poster presents a biorefinery for fractionating insect biomass focusing on preserv-ing the functional properties of proteins. In this way, proteins do not only have nutritional value but can serve as functional ingredient. More specifically, an approach has been elaborated to fractionate larvae of the black soldier fly into chitin, lipids and protein frac-tions envisioning maximal valorization of the biomass for application in feed and chem-istry. These larvae are well-known waste degrading insects, able to grow on different agro-industrial side streams and are on the list of the most promising insects for indus-trial production in the western world. Through the fractionation procedures high-value products like proteins, chitin and lipids can be recovered and thus turning waste into a second-generation resource. Separating fat from animal residue is traditionally performed by rendering, a high tem-perature process resulting in denatured proteins. Our new fractionation procedures will be compared to the rendering process focusing on yield, purity and especially on pre-serving the functional properties of proteins. Furthermore, we will discuss different pre-treatment and separation techniques to remove chitin. Results show that pretreatment as well as the solvent type has a major impact on the fractionation efficiency. This pro-ject has partially received funding from BBI Joint Undertaking under the European Un-ion’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 720715.