Project description
Sustainably treating waste water on the small scale
The food and drink industry is the EU’s biggest manufacturing sector. It’s also one of the biggest users of water and a major producer of waste water. This is why solutions for treating biodegradable waste and sewage sludge are important. While anaerobic digestion is commonly used, it’s not optimised for small scale levels. The EU-funded Multi-AD Feasibility project will bring to market a small-scale anaerobic digester that is built for waste water treatment in food and drink sector SMEs. This innovative technology can generate 80 % methane-rich biogas that can be partially reused (50 %) for its operation and partially for other energy-demanding industrial tasks. The project will prepare the product for commercialisation in several EU countries and Latin America.
Objective
Food & Drink (F&D) industry is one of the most water consuming sectors, and is considered one of the largest producers of wastewater, producing roughly 2.17 million m3/day of wastewater in Europe. This is the largest manufacturing sector in EU, composed mainly by SMEs (>99%).
Technically, anaerobic digesters are NOT optimised for small volumes (<1,000 m3). So, most industrial wastewater treatment technologies are optimised for much larger volumes (average: 2,500 m3). Economically, these technologies are very expensive (>1M€). Thus, only big companies implement anaerobic digestors. Until now. In AEMA, we have been able to downscale a disruptive small scale anaerobic digestor for wastewater treatment, addressed to F&D industry: Multi-AD.
Multi-AD is a high performance MULTIphase Anaerobic Digester tailor-made for treating wastewater generated in Food and Drink SMEs. It is fully sensorised, being able to self-regulate basic operational parameters (T, flow…) for its auto-operation depending on the kind of wastewater characteristics it needs to treat. It will generate 80% methane-rich biogas that be partially used -50%- for its operation, and partially used -50%- for other energy-demanding industrial tasks (e.g. heating, at the industry choice), with average economic savings of 15,000€/year (when treating 100 m3/d) and 11% less CO2 emissions.
We will commercialise it in the most important EU28 countries in terms of F&D industry, and as well in some countries in Latin America, being the flagship product for our internationalisation.
We plan to sell in the first five commercialisation years 108 units of the device, what will imply that we will sum up to AEMA’s team 14 persons. The project will have a ROI of 2.82.
This Multi-AD project will contribute to ensure the safe and efficient use of water resources, to have a resource-efficient industrial sector in the whole EU, and ultimately to foster the use of renewable energy in industry.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyother engineering and technologiesfood technology
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwater treatment processeswastewater treatment processes
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcontrol systems
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energy
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringnatural resources managementwater management
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
26540 ALFARO
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.