AI-Enabled Waste Biorefinery: Valorization of Seafood & Agricultural Residues into High-Value Bioproducts
Turn seafood and agricultural residues into useful bioproducts. Explore extraction, process design, and AI tools that can support better decisions.
Skills you will gain:
About Program:
This three-day workshop covers the design and analysis of nanomaterial-based biosensors for point-of-care testing. Participants will learn how a biosensor detects a biological target, produces a measurable signal, and uses that signal to assess a sample. Hands-on exercises will use example sensor data to practise signal processing, visualisation, machine learning, and performance evaluation.
Aim: To help participants assess seafood and agricultural residues, design preliminary recovery pathways, and use process data to compare product and operating choices. And develop a practical understanding of nanobiosensors and the data analysis methods used to interpret their signals in point-of-care diagnostics.
Program Objectives:
- Understand the principles of waste-to-value biorefinery.
- Explore sustainable valorization of seafood and agricultural residues.
- Understand protein, chitin and chitosan recovery from seafood waste.
- Explore biomass fractionation and production of value-added materials.
- Analyse the relationship between process conditions and product properties.
- Apply basic mass-balance and process-optimization approaches.
- Use machine learning for biorefinery process and product prediction.
- Explore techno-economic and sustainability considerations for waste valorization.
What you will learn?
Day 1: Seafood Waste Biorefinery — Protein, Chitin & Chitosan
- Seafood waste composition, characterization and valorization opportunities.
- Processing and pretreatment of fish, shrimp and shellfish residues.
- Protein recovery and production of protein hydrolysates.
- Shrimp-shell demineralization and deproteinization.
- Chitin extraction, purification and conversion to chitosan.
- Chemical, enzymatic and fermentation-based extraction approaches.
- Yield, mass balance and recovery of valuable co-products.
Hands-on: Develop and analyse a shrimp-shell waste → protein → chitin → chitosan process workflow using experimental/literature data, including yield and process-parameter calculations.
Day 2: Agricultural Residues — Biomass Fractionation & Bioproducts
- Composition of agricultural residues: cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin.
- Feedstock selection, preprocessing and pretreatment.
- Biomass fractionation and recovery of valuable components.
- Cellulose and nanocellulose as value-added products.
- Lignin valorization and biomass-derived products.
- Biochar and activated carbon from agricultural residues.
- Product properties and characterization using FTIR, XRD, SEM, BET and thermal analysis.
Hands-on: Analyse an agricultural-residue dataset and develop a biomass → cellulose/nanocellulose or biochar conversion workflow, relating process conditions to product yield and properties.
Day 3: AI-Driven Biorefinery & Process Optimization
- Role of AI and machine learning in waste valorization and biorefinery.
- Preparing experimental and process datasets for machine learning.
- Feature engineering and identification of important process variables.
- Predicting product yield and quality using regression models.
- Random Forest and Gradient Boosting for process-property prediction.
- Design of Experiments and Response Surface Methodology.
- AI-assisted process optimization and multi-objective decision-making.
- Basic techno-economic and sustainability considerations.
- Designing an integrated waste-to-value biorefinery.
Hands-on: Build an AI-assisted waste-to-value optimization workflow:
Feedstock → Process Conditions → ML Prediction → Optimization → Product Selection
Mentor Profile
Fee Plan
Get an e-Certificate of Participation!
Intended For :
- Chemical and bioprocess engineers
- Biotechnology and food-science students
- Seafood-processing and agricultural-biomass researchers
- Environmental scientists
- Materials and nanotechnology researchers
- Bioinformatics and data-analysis researchers
- Faculty members and postdoctoral researchers
- Industry professionals working in waste processing
- Researchers interested in the circular bioeconomy
Career Supporting Skills
Program Outcomes
- By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
- Assess seafood and agricultural residues for potential bioproducts.
- Outline protein, chitin, and chitosan recovery from shrimp residues.
- Compare cellulose-based materials and biochar as products from agricultural biomass.
- Calculate basic product yields and material balances.
- Interpret selected process and product-characterization data.
- Build and assess a basic model for predicting product yield.
- Compare process options using yield, resource use, and product quality.
- Develop a preliminary waste-to-value biorefinery workflow.