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

The EU-funded round economy challenge MUBIC centered on the transformation of minimal-benefit agricultural waste into large-benefit products – a single of which is made use of to mature mushrooms, whose cultivation the companions established out to revolutionise.

Far more exclusively, this merchandise is a new style of mushroom substrate, the product on which the mushrooms are grown. ‘Along with other outputs, this kind of as gasoline pellets, fertiliser, and pre-treated feedstock for faster biogas manufacturing, the procedure formed in MUBIC also delivers substantial sustainability gains,’ suggests challenge coordinator Peter Damgaard Nielsen of Danish SME Innovative Substrate Technologies (AST).

It notably boosts the biogas yield from agricultural wastes like straw or horse bedding by about 30 %, via the prior chopping and grinding of this biomass. The ability to procedure soaked straw, meadow grass and comparable product is a particular furthermore level: the MUBIC procedure for these difficult kinds of feedstock also entails pretreatment with nitrogen to split down the lignin in the stalks, Nielsen explains.

Rewarding, round, eco-friendly

‘Using this procedure, you get a lot more biogas and you get it faster, due to the fact the germs in the biogas plant can also use the lignin as feed,’ suggests Nielsen. The nitrogen made use of for this pre-cure is recovered from the biogas plant, via the cure of the digestate – the residues of the feedstock.

The nitrogen is extracted from the digestate in services intended as annexes to the biogas crops by themselves. As of July 2020, operations have begun at the initial this kind of increase-on plant intended as a business facility, in accordance to Nielsen.

In the MUBIC product, the digestate may well, in simple fact, have began out as biomass supplied by the companions. ‘Our lorries choose feedstock to the biogas plant and digestate again to the increase-on plant, where we dry it,’ Nielsen proceeds.

The treated digestate is then converted into a assortment of products. Along with the mushroom substrate, these outputs include things like gasoline pellets that are substantially a lot more sustainable than competing products due to the fact they are derived from a style of waste and due to the fact this waste is a residue of locally sourced biomass.

The MUBIC procedure delivers a pelletised substrate whose dry matter content, at 85 %, is substantially higher than that of conventional substrates, which typically typical about 30 %. Therefore, MUBIC substrate offers far a lot more mushroom feed for every cubic metre than competing products, Nielsen explains. Due to its large dry-matter content, it can be saved and does not require cooling through transport more than for a longer period distances – not like conventional substrates, which may well commence to rot.

MUBIC’s substrate complements another innovation created in the challenge: a technique by which mushrooms grown on trays transfer past pickers on a conveyor belt, as opposed to pickers obtaining to transfer via the cabinets in mushroom farms. This particular innovation was perfected by Dutch SME Panbo Methods, the 2nd partner included in the challenge, as a way to reduce harvesting fees.

Rooted in soaked straw

MUBIC, which finished in January 2020, was funded via a Horizon 2020 programme exclusively intended to help SMEs prepare their innovations for commercialisation. With out this assist, the straw-to-substrate strategy would have been shelved, suggests Nielsen, who emphasises that the funding enabled the companions to convey their concept to lifetime.

AST experienced at first regarded marketing entire increase-on crops, but inevitably determined to target on the products created all through the procedure rather: revenue is created at several actions, from uncooked product that is mainly readily available for totally free.

Spent substrate from mushroom manufacturing is a single this kind of residue, and a great example of the proposed round method. In MUBIC, it is recovered as feedstock for the manufacturing of biogas, and the digestate still left more than from this procedure is made use of to make refreshing substrate.

Both equally the new mushroom cultivation technique and the various products from MUBIC’s round benefit chain have been fulfilled with desire, with new partnerships enabling the challenge companions to choose these developments ahead, Nielsen concludes.