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Project title

CircBioCityWaste: Converting urban waste streams into value-added products

Primary Funding Agency

Environmental Protection Agency

Co-Funding Organisation(s)

n/a

Lead Organisation

Munster Technological University (MTU)

Lead Applicant

Gaurav Rajauria

Project Abstract

A resource-intensive urban society contributes significantly to the pressure on the planet's ecosystems creating visible environmental and social challenges. The generation of waste is one of the central concerns in urban agglomerations, which often poses challenges for local authorities. Throughout EU, about 138 million tonnes (Mt) of urban biowaste, while in Ireland more than 3 Mt is generated each year. Most of this waste is discarded by landfilling or incineration, negatively impacting soil and groundwater, and resulting in greenhouse gas emissions, and space usage. While there have been huge advances in waste recycling over recent decades, municipal solid waste still tends to be incinerated, digested, composted or sent to landfill despite retaining a large organic fraction which, if recovered, has inherent value as a resource as well as aligns with Europes ambitions for a circular economy. The CircBioCityWaste project is based on the key principle of ‘circular bioeconomy focusing on the sustainable, resource-efficient valorisation of three urban biowaste streams (anaerobically digested (AD) sludge from municipal and dairy processing and organic portion from black wastebin). It aims to develop a first-of-a-kind integrated biorefinery concept in Ireland via cascading, using end-of-waste approach, CircBioCityWaste demonstrates a novel concept of new value chains from urban biowaste biomass sourcing to biobased agrochemicals (biostimulants and biofertiliser) for sustainable agriculture focusing on plant growth and soil health, and bioenergy as a sustainable source of clean energy. This biorefinery concept will start with the collection of AD sludge from selected biowaste streams followed by developing pretreatment and extraction technologies/processes for recovering fine agrochemical (biostimulants). The residual waste will be combusted at low temperature using fluidised bed combustion to produce bioenergy. This process significantly reduces waste volume, destroys persistent organic pollutants and lead to mineralisation and concentration of phosphorus and other nutrients in the resultant ash, that will be explored as biofertilser. The impact of agrochemicals on growth of economically important crops will be assessed in pot trials. CircBioCityWaste will evaluate the sustainability of multiproduct biorefinery and assesses the economic, social and environmental impacts of the developed products/materials or processes using life-cycle assessment methodologies. To effectively generate a comprehensive perspective on the opportunity of exploiting urban biowaste as a valuable resource, the CircBioCityWaste project has assembled a very strong interdisciplinary team from three Irish universities and expert/representatives/advisors from industry and local authorities, balanced across discipline, expertise and gender. Leveraging partners knowledge, resources and relationships, CircBioCityWaste will build on prior state-of-the art research, and aims at delivering a number of outcomes including: 1) develop technologies to produce three agrochemicals from urban biowaste, opening up new possibilities for their production and marketing on large scale in Ireland; 2) generation of clean bioenergy replacing fossil fuels; and 3) the de-carbonisation of urban biowaste management with, amongst others, a strong component of long-term carbon sequestration. The CircBioCityWaste project will advance the Irish waste management and recycling sector diversification which will deliver significant environmental, economic and societal benefits in high-quality jobs and economic growth in the region whilst in tandem supporting circular bioeconomy development.

Grant Approved

�493,669.60

Research Hub

Green and Circular Economy

Research Theme

n/a

Start Date

31/03/2022

Initial Projected Completion Date

30/03/2026