MI-WINE

Project title: Mild Innovative Treatment For Wine Stabilisation

Duration: 01.11.2020 - 31.04.2024

Project Budget: 239 000 EUR

Budget for UPWr (role): 40 000 EUR, i.e. 174 764,00 PLN (Partner)

Project Coordinator: Prof. dr hab. inż. Antoni Szumny

The project pursues two objectives. The first objective is to advance the knowledge in ceramic materials (metal oxides) design strategies for adsorbing and removing typical contaminants responsible for the instability of wine and other organic beverages; a further, secondary objective, is to implement the aforementioned design strategies in a new resource-efficient process that improves the overall quality and nutritional value of organic wine and other beverages.

The first objective is pursued increasing knowledge on the mechanistic processes underlying the adsorption of specific chemical compounds (undesirable wine contaminants such as proteins and metal ions) on the surface of metal oxides, in form of mesoporous materials, submicrometric powders, nanostructured coatings. For this purpose the physical/chemical/electrostatic effects involved, the adsorption selectivity, the absorption strength and effectiveness, the desorption processes will be investigated.

Based on mechanistic results, the secondary objective is pursued exploring manufacturing technologies to integrate the developed innovative material, with reduced processing time and costs, also entailed in the recovery or disposal of waste provided by batch treatment systems currently used in the food industry.

The project is expected to result in:

• execution of research to support the development of knowledge and strategies to prevent beverage volatility (short-term effect) and support the transition to sustainable and environmentally friendly production of high-quality beverages (medium-term);
• improving sustainability and resource efficiency in the beverage and wine production process, reducing waste and product losses (medium-term);
• strengthening cooperation and linkages in the EU between different scientific disciplines (food processing, food science, agriculture, ceramics) to spread excellence and innovation potential among organic beverage producers and food equipment manufacturers, (medium-term);

Through further innovation projects - from basic research to industrial research - the competitiveness of the beverage industry (especially for SMEs) will be improved by upgrading current technology from TRL4 to complete system and qualified (TRL8) in the long term.