CIRCULAR BIOCARBON -Turning carbon of complex organic urban waste streams into value-added products (H2020–BBI–JU)

General concept

CIRCULAR BIOCARBON is a first-of-its-kind flagship biorefinery conceived to valorise organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) into value-added products: diamond-like-carbon coatings, green graphene, tailor-made bio-based fertilisers, or bio-plastic, as well as a variety of intermediate products. To maximise replicability and boost potential 

penetration in the market, the biorefinery will be operated for three years in Spain and Italy, and consistent business and exploitation strategies will be put in place. The CIRCULAR BIOCARBON biorefinery, organised through a pool of cascading technologies, start from anaerobic process steps (after proper pre-treatment) of mixed urban waste streams, of which OFMSW is the main one, in order to treat all the biowaste produced by a medium-size city (at the end of the project, a commercial scale biorefinery will be fully operative). The fundamental objective of the CIRCULAR BIOCARBON project is to open up new business frameworks based on a new circular vision of waste treatment in a city towards a sustainable bioeconomy, to which actors leading the territorial waste management schemes and policies will be brought to maximize impact on the market, on policy makers and on society. 

The role of UNIVPM in CIRCULAR BIOCARBON

The project will demonstrate the industrial viability of the SCHEPPAR system (background IPR of Prof. Fatone- UNIVPM) in a wider concept of OFMSW and sewage sludge biorefinery. SCEPPHAR system will be fully scaled-up (500 m3 of fermenter) to integrate the existing Sesto San Giovanni AD section, managed by the water utility CAP Holding. UNIVPM will work together with the UNIVR team (third party) for the process design and start-up of the system. UNIVPM experience in pilot scale co-fermentation in real environment and demo and full-scale process design in previous H2020 (e.g. SMART-Plant) will be valorised both in technical and replication activities.  

Expected impacts

Circular Biocarbon will promote a new concept, treating bio-waste as a raw material, not as a disposable product, obtaining different products of high added value for the market. The main expected impact of the project will be to realize the first commercially viable biorefinery, converting OFMSW to valuable building blocks and materials at commercial levels, including nexus with the primary sector. The project advances valorising options of existing biogas facilities and demonstrates transformation of other industries utilising carbon as their building block.