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

The EU-funded circular overall economy job MUBIC centered on the transformation of reduced-value agricultural waste into higher-value products – 1 of which is utilised to improve mushrooms, whose cultivation the associates established out to revolutionise.

A lot more precisely, this solution is a new style of mushroom substrate, the substance on which the mushrooms are grown. ‘Along with other outputs, these as gasoline pellets, fertiliser, and pre-taken care of feedstock for a lot quicker biogas generation, the system shaped in MUBIC also provides significant sustainability gains,’ claims job coordinator Peter Damgaard Nielsen of Danish SME Sophisticated Substrate Systems (AST).

It notably increases the biogas produce from agricultural wastes like straw or horse bedding by about thirty {744e41c82c0a3fcc278dda80181a967fddc35ccb056a7a316bb3300c6fc50654}, by means of the prior chopping and grinding of this biomass. The means to system damp straw, meadow grass and similar substance is a particular as well as issue: the MUBIC system for these tough types of feedstock also requires pretreatment with nitrogen to split down the lignin in the stalks, Nielsen explains.

Worthwhile, circular, inexperienced

‘Using this system, you get far more biogas and you get it a lot quicker, for the reason that the germs in the biogas plant can also use the lignin as feed,’ claims Nielsen. The nitrogen utilised for this pre-therapy is recovered from the biogas plant, by means of the therapy of the digestate – the residues of the feedstock.

The nitrogen is extracted from the digestate in amenities designed as annexes to the biogas crops them selves. As of July 2020, functions have begun at the 1st these insert-on plant designed as a business facility, in accordance to Nielsen.

In the MUBIC product, the digestate may possibly, in fact, have started out out as biomass equipped by the associates. ‘Our lorries get feedstock to the biogas plant and digestate again to the insert-on plant, exactly where we dry it,’ Nielsen proceeds.

The taken care of digestate is then converted into a assortment of goods. Alongside with the mushroom substrate, these outputs contain gasoline pellets that are significantly far more sustainable than competing goods for the reason that they are derived from a style of waste and for the reason that this waste is a residue of regionally sourced biomass.

The MUBIC system provides a pelletised substrate whose dry make any difference content, at 85 {744e41c82c0a3fcc278dda80181a967fddc35ccb056a7a316bb3300c6fc50654}, is significantly better than that of typical substrates, which generally average about 30 {744e41c82c0a3fcc278dda80181a967fddc35ccb056a7a316bb3300c6fc50654}. Thus, MUBIC substrate provides considerably far more mushroom feed per cubic metre than competing goods, Nielsen explains. Because of to its higher dry-make any difference content, it can be stored and does not call for cooling for the duration of transportation over longer distances – not like typical substrates, which may possibly start off to rot.

MUBIC’s substrate complements another innovation developed in the job: a system by which mushrooms grown on trays transfer previous pickers on a conveyor belt, as opposed to pickers acquiring to transfer by means of the shelves in mushroom farms. This particular innovation was perfected by Dutch SME Panbo Systems, the next associate associated in the job, as a way to lower harvesting prices.

Rooted in damp straw

MUBIC, which ended in January 2020, was funded via a Horizon 2020 programme precisely designed to assist SMEs prepare their improvements for commercialisation. Devoid of this guidance, the straw-to-substrate thought would have been shelved, claims Nielsen, who emphasises that the funding enabled the associates to carry their strategy to daily life.

AST had to begin with deemed offering overall insert-on crops, but at some point made the decision to concentrate on the goods created during the system instead: earnings is created at many measures, from raw substance that is mainly readily available for cost-free.

Used substrate from mushroom generation is 1 these residue, and a best case in point of the proposed circular tactic. In MUBIC, it is recovered as feedstock for the generation of biogas, and the digestate still left over from this system is utilised to make new substrate.

The two the new mushroom cultivation system and the several goods from MUBIC’s circular value chain have been achieved with fascination, with new partnerships enabling the job associates to get these developments forward, Nielsen concludes.