Gasification is a thermal process that converts organic matter into fuel gas (Syngas) at high temperatures (above 600 ºC). When Syngas is burnt in a combustion engine, simultaneous production of electricity and heat is obtained in one only step. The main limitation of current gasification plants are the great amount of wastes needed to work properly, which makes this technology very difficult to be implemented in industrial sectors with less quantity of wastes production. This market demands a more flexible, modular and portable technology. On the other hand, the pellet production is a process with very high energy consumption, mainly due to the need of raw material drying, and with a waste product suitable for energy recovery by gasification. The general objective of this innovation project is to place in market a breakthrough energy technology for pellet manufacturing industries with high energy consumption that will allow valorising their wastes, currently with none or less economic value, by means of a modular and portable gasification-CHP plant installed in their facilities. Additionally, the project development will help to solve a serious environmental problem caused by the excessive accumulation of wastes in landfills. In order to reach this objective, the consortium will validate the study of this energy technology carried out in pellets manufacturing industries by scaling-down the gasification plant currently used for tens of tonnes per day of waste and optimise the functional parameters to the type of waste treated to ensure the same process yield as bigger plants. Phase 1 of ENERCOVERY aims to ensure the viability of the project. A technical analysis on the viability of the implementation of a gasification-CHP plant in pellet manufacturing process and a business plan will be developed.

The project CIRCULAR-FUEL is an integrated 4-year program focused on knowledge transfer and networking among seven partners. These include one Spanish university, the University of Sevilla (UoS); two Spanish companies, GREENE ENTERPRISE S.L (GreenE). and Vortico; one Italian university, the Polytechnic University of Milan (PoliMi); one German university, the University of Hohenheim (UHOH); one UK university, the Queen’s University Belfast (QUB); and one UK company, GreenX Technology Ltd (GreenX). The project will directly address biomass utilization challenges by researching and developing innovative approaches for sorting and recycling biowaste into value-added chemicals and materials through several pathways. This effort will subsequently expand to encompass a wider range of biomass species by incorporating process simulation and machine learning.

The project goal is to further advance the emerging area of Bio - process - systems engineering (BPSE) by capitalizing the recent advances and ITN of RENESENG (FP7 - PEOPLE - ITN) toward the following project objectives : - Expanding the knowledge for value chains across feedstocks, products and industries, e.g., by looking into the potential of MSW (including food waste) energy chemicals nexus. - Investigating the area of knowledge management (i.e., data structures, workflows, protocols) for the effective communication across the diverse academic research scales and industrial applications (i.e., lab to unit operations, to process and plant design, to business development, sustainability assessment). - Applying the existing RENESENG tools, models, methods, know how as well as the newly developed in this project to emerging topics of bioeconomy and links to circular economy, with special focus on various forms of “waste” biomass (e.g., MSW, glycerol, lignin). Enhancing the network with new aca demic and non academic partners and significantly contributing via meaningful secondments to the career development of ESR and ER.

SYMSITES?s main objective is to implement regional industrial urban symbiosis in four European regions different in social economic, and environment aspects, from the north Denmark, through the mid Austria to the south Spain and Greece. The four EcoSites will use the same technologies for wastewater and waste treatment and energy production and cycling, enabling a clean comparison of the EcoSite impacts. The four EcoSites will generate virtuous circles of energy, treated waste and wastewater streams between urban and industrial entities. The enabling technologies to be developed for waste and wastewater (WW) co-treatment, are: a newly developed IT Regional Management platform (ITRMP) including novel IIoTs and Social Decision support System (SDSS) to manage efficiently the I-U symbiosis; an anaerobic bioreactor(AnMBR) with advanced membrane coupled with a tertiary treatment, to be installed at the four EcoSites for a clean comparison of all impacts not directly influenced by different technologies. The aim is A) to achieve near-zero GHG emissions or CO2 negative footprint; B) use of bio-waste and non-recyclable wastes (NRW) to produce energy and reusable water as well as high-value new resources (HVNR), thus reducing the waste generation by ~50%; LCA and LCC studies and the quantity prevented from transportation (Ton-Kilometer units) and from landfilling (Ton/m3 units) will evaluate the costs and environmental impact. Dedicated tools will be developed to spread he I-US concept within Europe. These include: virtual demonstration of replication potential in other regions by setting up a network amongst waste associations ' facilitation services for implementing symbiotic processes; actions to facilitate relations and to involve the local community actors and establishment of a social innovation non profit spin-off involving tools and business models for streams exchange in a dynamic production.