Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CAFIPLA (Combining carboxylic acid production and fibre recovery as an innovative, cost-effective and sustainable pre-treatment process for heterogeneous bio-waste)
Berichtszeitraum: 2020-06-01 bis 2021-11-30
The second problem concerns the environmental, economic and social problems associated with (heterogeneous) bio-waste treatment. These waste streams have a very diverse origin and composition and their quantity and quality can vary throughout the year. A landfill ban on bio-waste has already eliminated the most noxious form of dealing with these waste types yet the treatment is currently still limited to incineration, or AD and composting at best. The use of these bio-waste streams as alternative feedstock for the bio-industry is currently limited because of the heterogeneous composition of these waste streams, and/or because of the fluctuating or limited availability.
The 3-year CAFIPLA project will therefore radically alter the biomass pre-treatment approach for bio-economy applications The project will develop an integrated biomass valorisation strategy that combines the carboxylic acid and fibre recovery platform (CAP/FRP). CAFIPLA firstly optimises the separation of the easily biodegradable fraction and recalcitrant biomass, as input for the Carboxylic Acid Platform (CAP) and Fibre Recovery Platform (FRP), respectively. This allows the implementation of tailored valorisation strategies for both routes, which in turn allows the use of heterogeneous biowaste as input, while still ensuring high overall yields. In the CAP, research will focus on process control strategies to obtain specific spectra of carboxylic acids to feed into bioproduction of microbial protein, PHA or caproic acid biooil. In the FRP, fractionation into different fibre ranges will result in intermediates that can be valorised as packaging material or insulation. A TRL5 pilot will demonstrate the CAFIPLA up-scaling potential. The implementation of the CAFIPLA approach will improve sustainability and cost-effectiveness of biomass pre-treatment. The project will furthermore study the biomass supply chain and the business models for future implementation.
The main idea on which the CAFIPLA project is built, is to combine two complementary pre-treatment processes to provide an economic attractive solution to the aforementioned problems and unlock the potential of these heterogeneous bio-waste streams as a source of secondary raw materials. Overall, 63% of the recoverable carbon and nutrients in the bio-waste will be upcycled to two types of platform intermediate products: SCCA and fibres. The first pre-treatment process concerns the CAP, focusing on the easily degradable organics part of bio-waste. The CAP will be otimized to steer the hydrolysis process to create a specific carboxylic acid spectrum depending on the target application in the bio-based economy and/or o obtaining a constant output quality / spectrum from fluctuating input. The FRP research focusses on the implementation of an environmentally friendly process for insoluble fibre extraction using natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) and the provision of fibres for different applications considering differences in feedstock / biomass supply. Any remaining organics after CAP-FRP will be converted to biogas and/or compost using a modified DRANCO process. Afterwards, CAFIPLA will demonstrate the application potential of the platform intermediates for various added-value end-products such biopolymer PHA (bioplastics), microbial protein (food/feed/fertilizer), caproic acid (chemical) or fibres for divers’ applications.