Project description
Generating renewable energy from waste
Produced from recovered waste, solid recovered fuel (SRF) is a high-yield source of energy for renewable heat and electricity generation. This waste disposal alternative can help recover a significant proportion of municipal and industrial waste. Currently, 30 % of non-mineral, non-hazardous waste goes to landfill, which represents an almost 70 million metric tonnes per year of unrealised SRF production potential in Europe. The EU-funded REAL project is developing microgasification technology to overcome current challenges with SRF valorisation. REAL will implement a business model to increase the development and management of small local production units that are competitive in the liberalised energy market without any additional subsidy. The project will guarantee affordable energy supply and reliability.
Objective
Over the past 20 years, Europe has increasingly shifted its focus on the municipal and industrial waste from disposal to prevention and recycling. 30% of non-mineral, non-hazardous waste goes to landfill, which represents a Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF) production in Europe of 70 million tons/year. The SRF is a fuel produced by shredding and dehydrating solid waste, typically consisting of combustible components. While promising as thermally recoverable waste, the SRF potential is today underexploited due to technical, economic and regulatory issues. Our company LCEET has thus designed an innovative micro-gasification technology – called REAL – to overcome current challenges of SRF valorisation, reducing the flue gas volume (-40%), the installation size and related capital investment (by up to 45%). Face to other technologies, REAL allows for an energy recovery over 80%. This project also addresses the challenges of the EU energy markets which face a continuous increase of electricity consumption that overloads the power stations and threatens the supply security and power quality. Decentralised energy production is a solution that can complement current central generation supply infrastructures. Despite the advantages, current developers are hindered by: non-shared governance, limited technical solutions, complexity of finances, management of investments, profitability, efficiency and sustainability. REAL aims to implement a business model to boost territorial energy autonomy, by supporting municipalities, industries, citizens in the decision, development and management of small local production units, competitive in the liberalised energy market without any additional subsidy. This project guarantees energy supply & quality at competitive price and a reduction of associated cost to waste management. For LCEET, REAL exploitation will allow us to obtain a lead position in energy production projects for local economies, obtaining a revenue growth over €31.4M by 2026.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processesrecycling
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energy
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsmonetary and finances
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementbusiness models
- agricultural sciencesagricultural biotechnologybiomass
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
75008 PARIS
France
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.