Renewable systems engineering for waste valorisation (II)

The project goal is to advance the emerging area of Biorefineries-systems engineering (BSE) and particularly investigate the role that BSE can play on waste valorisation and, thus, circular economy. To achieve this, RENESENG-II will capitalize on recent advances and contribute to the development of diverse disciplines, such as process systems engineering, industrial biotechnology, catalytic engineering, environmental systems analysis, and knowledge management. The application domain will cover thermochemical, chemical, and biochemical valorisation of diverse waste biomass sources, including municipal, agricultural and industrial waste.

The main project objectives are:
- Expanding the knowledge for value chains across feed-stocks, products and industries, e.g., by looking into the
potential of MSW (including food waste) energy chemicals nexus.

- Investigating the area of knowledge management (i.e., data structures, workflows, protocols) for the effective
communication across the diverse academic research scales and industrial applications (i.e., lab to unit operations, to
process and plant design, to business development, sustainability assessment).

- Applying the existing RENESENG tools, models, methods, know how as well as the newly developed in this project
to emerging topics of bio-economy and links to circular economy, with special focus on various forms of “waste”
biomass (e.g., MSW, glycerol, lignin). Enhancing the network with new academic and non academic partners and
significantly contributing via meaningful secondments to the career development of ESR and ER.

The importance for the society of these objectives is very significant. Biorefineries are the emergent new chemical industries that integrate biomass conversion processes to produce fuels, energy, and added-value chemicals. The objective of a biorefinery is to optimize the use of resources and minimize wastes, thereby maximizing benefits and profitability. Industrial biorefineries have been identified as the most promising route to the creation of a new European biobased industry. Circular economy implies that waste becomes an attractive, cheap, local resource and inter-industry sharing of resources becomes an integrated part of modern, green business models. In this context, biorefineries can provide an innovative, beyond the waste-to-energy, effective valorisation, exploiting systemic synergies for efficient production of added-value products and waste reduction.