Solid waste can be transformed into solution and used for medical and nourishing purposes

São Paulo: In some years, solid waste might no longer have the same destination of the wastes produced by the food industry and agriculture. The waste, rich in proteins, might be transformed into solution for medical and nourishing purposes. This is what thinks Professor Raquel Camargo Giordano from Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFScar) after a study carried out in partnership with Spain’s Instituto de Catalisis y Petroleoquímica and with Araraquara campus of Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). The solution researched, composed with short peptides and amino acids, can be utilized in the treatment of phenylketonuria, Rachel explains. This genetic disorder is relatively common and its treatment demands a controled diet for the first six years of the patient’s life with very low amounts of phenylananine – which is taken out of the solution during its industrialization. The product can also be used by patients with pancreatitis. The project also has an echological motivation. The aim is to make the industries utilize the water that is left after the skimming of milk, guts, blood and unedible parts of fish, and the water used in soya beans processing. When dumped into rivers, those rests are eaten by bacteries which consume the oxygen in the water resulting in the death of fauna and flora. To the University, the progressively stricter environmental regulation tends to stimulate the commercial recovery of industrial waste: “There will come a time when treating industrial waste will be compulsory”, believes José Carlos Gubulin, Chief Researcher of the Department of Chemical Engeneering in UFScar. He concludes: “Those who cannot commercialize their waste will be unable to produce more.” The project, scheduled to last four years, received a support of US$ 220 thousand from the Technological and Scientific Development Support Program, sustained by the World Bank and Brazil’s Ministry of Science and Technology. Echological reasons led Professor Giordano to research with his former colleagues the production of an enzime used in the preparation of semi-synthetic antibiotics such as ampicillin and amoxillin. Laboratories in the whole world are trying to develop a similar product that would bring about a much less pollutant process to manufacture antibiotics