The Technological Development Unit (UDT) of the Universidad de Concepción (UdeC) is an institute of science, technology and innovation created in 1996, which focuses on the field of bioeconomy. It depends on the Vice-Chancellor for Research and Development of UdeC.
UDT carries out cutting-edge scientific and technological research in close relationship with the productive sector and the academy, with national and international collaboration networks. Thanks to the development of frontier projects, the high investment in infrastructure and frontier equipment, and the high scientific and technological capacity of our collaborators, we are a unique R&D+i center in Chile in terms of scaling capabilities of the results from the laboratory to pilot and demonstration plants, and from here, to an industrial level.
Our scope of work focuses on the recovery of agricultural and forest biomass, mainly residual or low-value currents. Through new processes, frequently integrated into biorefineries, we seek to generate products of commercial interest such as biobased materials, macro, micro and nanofiber cellulose materials, biofuels, bioplastics, bioadhesives, industrial additives and fine chemicals. Therefore, we tend to create the basis of a BIOECONOMY that gradually replaces fossil raw materials with biobased materials and, at the same time, a CIRCULAR ECONOMY that uses residual currents to generate new products.