Speaker
Description
Massive accumulations of pelagic Sargassum along Atlantic and Caribbean coastlines pose a growing environmental and socio-economic burden and, at the same time, constitute an abundant renewable feedstock for high-value bio-based products. The European MSCA Staff Exchanges project SARGEX works to advance the sustainable valorisation of this marine biomass through the identification of valuable compounds and the development of innovative applications supporting the circular blue bioeconomy.
The chemical complexity and heterogeneity of Sargassum biomass call for advanced analytical methodologies capable of providing detailed information on the distribution, speciation and structural organization of both organic and inorganic components. In this context, synchrotron-based techniques, particularly X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS) and ideally μ-XAS, together with complementary spectroscopic, diffraction, and imaging methods, are well suited to map elemental speciation and distribution, resolve mineral–organic interactions, and track structural changes during biomass processing and biorefinery.
The integration of these multimodal and multi-scale analytical techniques with chromatography, metabolomics and bioactivity studies will deliver a complete chemical characterisation of Sargassum-derived materials. This, in turn, will guide the optimisation of extraction processes, the identification of high-value compounds, and the design of safe, sustainable applications.
Building upon previous experience using synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy for elemental speciation in agro-food systems, SARGEX offers an ideal framework to extend these analytical capabilities to marine biomass. In particular, understanding the chemical forms, spatial distribution, and transformation of essential nutrients and potentially toxic elements is central to assessing biomass safety and defining viable valorisation pathways.
ALBA II’s upgraded multimodal and multiscale capabilities, combined with high-throughput workflows and AI-assisted data analysis, make it a natural partner for the SARGEX research agenda, and a concrete test case for the facility’s potential in marine bioresource science.