From value chain to value loop with… – Information Centre – Research & Innovation

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The EU-funded circular overall economy undertaking MUBIC centered on the transformation of small-value agricultural waste into higher-value products 1 of which is made use of to develop mushrooms, whose cultivation the companions established out to revolutionise.

Additional especially, this solution is a new style of mushroom substrate, the product on which the mushrooms are grown. Along with other outputs, this sort of as gasoline pellets, fertiliser, and pre-dealt with feedstock for more rapidly biogas production, the system shaped in MUBIC also delivers sizeable sustainability gains, claims undertaking coordinator Peter Damgaard Nielsen of Danish SME Superior Substrate Systems (AST).

It notably raises the biogas generate from agricultural wastes like straw or horse bedding by about 30 {bcdc0d62f3e776dc94790ed5d1b431758068d4852e7f370e2bcf45b6c3b9404d}, via the prior reducing and grinding of this biomass. The capability to system wet straw, meadow grass and similar product is a specific moreover stage: the MUBIC system for these tough kinds of feedstock also includes pretreatment with nitrogen to crack down the lignin in the stalks, Nielsen clarifies.

Successful, circular, green

Using this system, you get a lot more biogas and you get it more rapidly, due to the fact the microbes in the biogas plant can also use the lignin as feed, claims Nielsen. The nitrogen made use of for this pre-cure is recovered from the biogas plant, via the cure of the digestate the residues of the feedstock.

The nitrogen is extracted from the digestate in facilities developed as annexes to the biogas vegetation on their own. As of July 2020, operations have begun at the first this sort of incorporate-on plant developed as a professional facility, in accordance to Nielsen.

In the MUBIC product, the digestate may well, in reality, have started out out as biomass equipped by the companions. Our lorries choose feedstock to the biogas plant and digestate back to the incorporate-on plant, wherever we dry it, Nielsen carries on.

The dealt with digestate is then transformed into a assortment of products and solutions. Along with the mushroom substrate, these outputs consist of gasoline pellets that are significantly a lot more sustainable than competing products and solutions due to the fact they are derived from a style of waste and due to the fact this waste is a residue of locally sourced biomass.

The MUBIC system delivers a pelletised substrate whose dry issue written content, at 85 {bcdc0d62f3e776dc94790ed5d1b431758068d4852e7f370e2bcf45b6c3b9404d}, is substantially larger than that of typical substrates, which typically ordinary about 30 {bcdc0d62f3e776dc94790ed5d1b431758068d4852e7f370e2bcf45b6c3b9404d}. As a result, MUBIC substrate supplies significantly a lot more mushroom feed per cubic metre than competing products and solutions, Nielsen clarifies. Due to its higher dry-issue written content, it can be saved and does not demand cooling for the duration of transportation more than more time distances unlike typical substrates, which may well start to rot.

MUBICs substrate enhances a different innovation developed in the undertaking: a method by which mushrooms grown on trays transfer past pickers on a conveyor belt, as opposed to pickers getting to transfer via the shelves in mushroom farms. This specific innovation was perfected by Dutch SME Panbo Methods, the next partner concerned in the undertaking, as a way to lower harvesting prices.

Rooted in wet straw

MUBIC, which ended in January 2020, was funded via a Horizon 2020 programme especially developed to help SMEs put together their innovations for commercialisation. Without the need of this assistance, the straw-to-substrate idea would have been shelved, claims Nielsen, who emphasises that the funding enabled the companions to provide their strategy to lifetime.

AST had originally viewed as marketing entire incorporate-on vegetation, but finally resolved to aim on the products and solutions produced all over the system alternatively: earnings is produced at several actions, from raw product that is mostly accessible for no cost.

Expended substrate from mushroom production is 1 this sort of residue, and a excellent illustration of the proposed circular method. In MUBIC, it is recovered as feedstock for the production of biogas, and the digestate left more than from this system is made use of to make clean substrate.

The two the new mushroom cultivation method and the numerous products and solutions from MUBICs circular value chain have been fulfilled with fascination, with new partnerships enabling the undertaking companions to choose these developments ahead, Nielsen concludes.