Pilots

The ELLIPSE project comprises 3 pilots.

A co-digestion of feedstocks will be carried out with the aim of ensuring the most optimal conditions to produce VFAs. Slaughterhouse waste will be the main residue used coupled to either sludge from food industry (dairy sludge) or glycerol.

In Pilot 2, residues from the paper industry, provided by HEPA will be used. This residue is a heterogeneous mix consisting of organic matter (e.g.cellulose fibres), filler (kaolin, calcium carbonate), ink, binder/stickies and other impurities (e.g. plastics). Before using it as a substrate for VFA production, it is necessary to separate problematic inorganic materials and impurities using a pretreatment step. Herein the pretreatment step will be similar to that applied in pilot 1, considering physical and chemical treatments. After removing the indigestible substrates, this presorted wastepaper industry waste will be used in the production of VFA. For this pilot the requirements of a VFA stream rich in valerate is not so high, as the final applications achieved do not require the same processing conditions. For the final formulations produced both in pilot 1 and 2 the addition of commercial additives like thermal stabilizers and/or plasticizers to avoid thermal degradation during the processing will be considered. Apart from that, compounds and coating formulations will be characterized and validated through the assessment of their processability by the corresponding processing technologies by the different partners.

Pilot 3 will be set to recover N and P towards the production of bio-fertilizers. Two different technologies will be validated.