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

The EU-funded round overall economy task MUBIC targeted on the transformation of small-price agricultural squander into substantial-price products – one of which is made use of to mature mushrooms, whose cultivation the associates set out to revolutionise.

Additional particularly, this solution is a new sort of mushroom substrate, the product on which the mushrooms are developed. ‘Along with other outputs, such as gasoline pellets, fertiliser, and pre-taken care of feedstock for quicker biogas manufacturing, the course of action formed in MUBIC also delivers considerable sustainability gains,’ says task coordinator Peter Damgaard Nielsen of Danish SME Advanced Substrate Systems (AST).

It notably boosts the biogas yield from agricultural wastes like straw or horse bedding by about thirty %, by means of the prior reducing and grinding of this biomass. The means to course of action soaked straw, meadow grass and related product is a unique additionally issue: the MUBIC course of action for these demanding types of feedstock also involves pretreatment with nitrogen to break down the lignin in the stalks, Nielsen describes.

Lucrative, round, green

‘Using this course of action, you get extra biogas and you get it quicker, simply because the microbes in the biogas plant can also use the lignin as feed,’ says Nielsen. The nitrogen made use of for this pre-treatment method is recovered from the biogas plant, by means of the treatment method of the digestate – the residues of the feedstock.

The nitrogen is extracted from the digestate in facilities designed as annexes to the biogas vegetation themselves. As of July 2020, functions have started at the first such add-on plant designed as a commercial facility, in accordance to Nielsen.

In the MUBIC model, the digestate might, in truth, have commenced out as biomass supplied by the associates. ‘Our lorries acquire feedstock to the biogas plant and digestate again to the add-on plant, wherever we dry it,’ Nielsen proceeds.

The taken care of digestate is then converted into a selection of products. Together with the mushroom substrate, these outputs involve gasoline pellets that are considerably extra sustainable than competing products simply because they are derived from a sort of squander and simply because this squander is a residue of domestically sourced biomass.

The MUBIC course of action delivers a pelletised substrate whose dry subject content, at 85 %, is a great deal bigger than that of common substrates, which normally ordinary about 30 %. Consequently, MUBIC substrate provides far extra mushroom feed for every cubic metre than competing products, Nielsen describes. Owing to its substantial dry-subject content, it can be saved and does not have to have cooling throughout transportation over lengthier distances – contrary to common substrates, which might begin to rot.

MUBIC’s substrate enhances a different innovation designed in the task: a system by which mushrooms developed on trays go earlier pickers on a conveyor belt, as opposed to pickers possessing to go by means of the shelves in mushroom farms. This unique innovation was perfected by Dutch SME Panbo Systems, the second associate associated in the task, as a way to minimize harvesting fees.

Rooted in soaked straw

MUBIC, which finished in January 2020, was funded by using a Horizon 2020 programme particularly designed to enable SMEs put together their innovations for commercialisation. Without this guidance, the straw-to-substrate strategy would have been shelved, says Nielsen, who emphasises that the funding enabled the associates to convey their strategy to lifetime.

AST had in the beginning deemed offering entire add-on vegetation, but eventually resolved to concentrate on the products produced all over the course of action alternatively: earnings is produced at several techniques, from uncooked product that is mostly out there for no cost.

Used substrate from mushroom manufacturing is one such residue, and a fantastic instance of the proposed round tactic. In MUBIC, it is recovered as feedstock for the manufacturing of biogas, and the digestate remaining over from this course of action is made use of to make fresh substrate.

Both the new mushroom cultivation system and the various products from MUBIC’s round price chain have been achieved with interest, with new partnerships enabling the task associates to acquire these developments ahead, Nielsen concludes.