Profile: BIOrescue project – Making the most of wastes from mushroom production
Type of post: PROJECT PROFILE.
Two years ago, the Blog reported the launching
of a BBI JU project focused on developing and demonstrating a new innovative
biorefinery concept to valorize a waste from mushroom production: the Spent
Mushroom Substrate (SMS). The name of this project is BIOrescue and was born from an
encounter between one of the world’s largest mushroom producer (Monaghan
Mushrooms) and Europe’s bioeconomy research community. In order to
make this new concept a reality, several partners from eight countries under CENER
(the National Renewable Energy Centre of Spain) coordination are cooperating to
transform used mushroom compost into sustainable biobased products.
Related post: “Launch
of European project leaded by CENER to develop a biorefinery concept based on
mushroom residues”, 3/10/2016.
On 11th October 2018, the consortium organized
a workshop (“Towards a circular bioeconomy in Spanish industry”) to share the
results of the project and discuss opportunities to close the loop in the
Spanish bioeconomy sector. I had the opportunity of attending this event which
was held in Madrid and learning first-hand about the smart BIOrescue concept.
The following lines are a summary of the presentations focused on explaining
this new biorefinery model.
The challenge
Each year, over 3 million tons of mushroom
compost is generated by mushroom production, thus creating significant economic
and logistical problems for Europe’s farmers. This compost, prepared solely for
growing mushrooms from chicken manure, peat and wheat straw, is only suitable
for one to three harvests. The mushroom industry lacks adapted technological
solutions to upgrade this spent compost into valuable products.
Figure 1. The compost, prepared solely for
growing mushrooms, is only suitable for one to three harvests (extracted from
“Creating value from agricultural residues: the biorefinery process step by
step” presented on the workshop by Inés del Campo from CENER)
SMS contains significant amounts of lignin but
relatively low concentrations of cellulose and hemicellulose. The project also targets
the supplementation of additional underutilised feedstocks that can improve the
composition of a mix containing SMS. Wheat straw has been selected as one
supplementary feedstock due to its attractive cellulose content and its current
use within existing mushroom farm infrastructure. Other feedstocks are being examined
to check their suitable for co-feeding with SMS in the configured process
scheme of the BIOrescue conversion technologies: prunings from a number of
crops (olive trees, vineyards, almond trees and peach trees), pomace samples
from olives and grapes, sugar beet pulp…
The biorefinery model
The BIOrescue project aims to develop and
demonstrate a new innovative biorefinery concept based on the cascading use of SMS
according to the diagram flow shown in the Figure 2. It is comprised by three
main stages: fractionation, primary conversion and secondary conversion.
Figure 2. BIOrescue biorefinery concept
(extracted from “Creating value from agricultural residues: the biorefinery
process step by step” presented on the workshop by Inés del Campo from CENER)
Fractionation
The concept includes a two-step fractionation process for
mushroom compost:
(1) Solid-liquid extraction of high added value
components;
(2) Thermochemical pretreatment process that
aims to fractionate the SMS into different components that can be subsequently
transformed into valuable biobased products.
Primary conversion
The primary conversion is an enzymatic
hydrolysis stage that includes enzyme immobilisation and recycling. The Finnish
company MetGen
has utilised its MetZyme® SUNO™ enzyme solution tailored for specific biomass
and process conditions to significantly improve saccharification yields at high
dry solid content and reduce cost through lower enzyme dosage. In addition, the
University of Naples Federico II
is developing new enzymes using genetic evolution to further increase process
performance.
Secondary conversion
The secondary conversion technologies target the
subsequent transformation of the fraction obtained from SMS: cellulose to biopesticides
and enzymes and the lignin and hemicellulose into nanocarriers.
The bioproducts
Biopesticides
Biopesticides are organism or substances
derived from natural materials (such animals, plants, bacteria or certain
minerals), including their genes or metabolites, for controlling pests. In this
project, the biopesticide is obtained by Bacillus thuringiensis HD1. This
organism produces proteins (Crys) which are characterised by their: high
specificity, lability and biodegradability. The hydrolysate derived from the
mix of SMS and wheat straw is used as carbon source in the fermentation broth.
Nanocarriers
One of the objectives of BIOrescue activities is
the formulation of lignin-nano/microcarriers by miniemulsion, their loading
with drugs (among them, the aforementioned biopesticides) and their upscaled
production. The building blocks for
those carriers come from SMS: carbohydrates and lignin.
Figure 3. The building blocks for nanocarriers
come from SMS (extracted from “Biodegradable nanocarriers for targeted plant
treatment” presented on the workshop by Frederik Wurm from Max Planck Institute
for Polymer Research)
The Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research is developing the natural polymer membranes
to create those biodegradable nanocapsules that enable the progressive and
controlled release of the drugs. It is the adaptation of a proven medical
concept that could reduce drastically the waste of chemicals occurring during
pesticide spraying as well as allow the direct delivery of the drugs in
internal parts of the plant.
Figure 4. Injection of lignin nanocarriers
(extracted from “Biodegradable nanocarriers for targeted plant treatment”
presented on the workshop by Frederik Wurm from Max Planck Institute for
Polymer Research)
Other activities
- Celignis
is developing customised mathematical models to predict the composition of samples
related to the conversion processes studied during the project.
- C-TECH
is leading all exploitation activities and perform the economic analysis,
ensuring market uptake for the newly developed biobased products and the most
promising innovations of the project.
- Greenovate!
Europe is disseminating information about the project and its achievements as
well as preparing the exploitation of the project’s results.
- Imperial College London
is performing the sustainability assessment of the project covering
techno-economic performance, environmental, social and political issues.
- Zabala is
managing all administrative and financial aspects of the project.
