3r2020+ Project – Residue, Resource, Recycling

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Some of the last posts of the blog have been focused on topics related to the circular economy (The Circular Economy Village of Ekokem and the REnescience technology of DONG Energy). Along the same line, I am going to present an interesting project approved in the call CIEN 2015 of CDTI (The Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology), a Public Business Entity which fosters the technological development and innovation of Spanish companies.

The project is called 3R2020+ “From the Residue to the Resource through Recycling” and it falls within the category of integral management of the waste. The blog was aware of the project during the Innovation Workshop “Evolución de las plantas de biogás a nuevos modelos basados en el concepto de biorrefinería” (June 28th, Madrid) organized by ainia and wherein Alexandre Colzi from Urbaser made a brilliant presentation about the first results of one of the work packages.

Goal

Its general objective is to develop innovative technologies that allow to recover and recycle certain waste flows, not currently valorized, to transform them into useful and economically viable resources. Strategic products and raw materials will be obtained, among them, fertilizers, metals, chemical products and liquid fuels with market value and application on different industrial areas.

The achievement of this general goal will allow to improve the percentages of secondary raw materials on the urban waste treatment facilities, to reduce risks associated to pollutant emission, to reduce landfilling and to contribute to reuse of materials. 3R2020+ is totally aligned with the international strategies related to the policies of smart and sustainable growth.

Partnership

The organizational structure is based on a partnership formed by the following members:

Figure 1. Working scheme of the 3R2020+ project (extracted from the web page of the project)

Technologies

In the following table, a summary of the wastes, transformation processes and final products involved in the project.

Waste
Transformation process
Final product
Polyolefins from waste treatment facilities
Thermal cracking + Catalytic hydroreforming.
Green diesel
Organic fraction of MSW
1. Hydrolysis stage of anaerobic digestion: Short-Chain Fatty Acids (SCFAs) production.
2. Bacterial synthesis of polyhidroxyalcanoates (PHAs) from SCHAs.
PHAs
1. Hydrolysis stage of anaerobic digestion: Short-Chain Fatty Acids (SCFAs) production.
2. Chain elongation.
Caproic acid
1. Hydrolysis stage of anaerobic digestion: hydrogen production.
Hydrogen
1. Anaerobic digestion: methane production.
2. Bacterial synthesis of polyhidroxyalcanoates (PHAs) from methane.
PHAs
1. Anaerobic digestion: digestate production.
2. Digestate fermentation.
D-lactic acid
Sewage sludge
1. Anaerobic digestion: liquid stream.
2. Centrifugation to separate the supernatant.
3. Struvite crystallization.
Struvite
1. Anaerobic digestion: liquid stream.
2. Selective recovery of ammonia and production of ammonium sulfide.
Ammonium sulfide
Waste from incineration, galvanization and chromium plating
Lixiviation and purification.
Basic metals, precious metals and strategic metals

After developing the process at laboratory scale, a demonstration stage will start to validate the information collected. Pilot plants will be constructed according to the maturity level achieved in the previous tests. In addition, a technical and economical assessment of the processes will be carried out in order to enable an ulterior commercial scale application. 

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