Biochemenergy: a project to turn an urban wastes treatment plant into biorefinery for the production of energy, chemicals and consumer’s products with friendly environmental impact

Urban bio-wastes (UBW) contain soluble bio-organics (SBO) with
excellent surfactant properties are proven or expected to perform as bio-based
products for use in chemical and environmental technology, in agriculture and
in animal husbandry as well as or better than commercial synthetic products.
On these basis, UBW are proposed as renewable sources of a wide number of
products with potential sale value ranging from one to several tens € kg–1. The
expected economical and environmental impacts of scaling up the laboratory
result to production and commercial level are evaluated based on a virtual
scenario which comprises integration of SBO production technology into a
waste management plant treating UBW by aerobic and anaerobic microbial
digestion according to the current technology. The results point out that the
integrated plant selling biogas and SBO is likely to yield six times higher
earnings than the current plant whose revenue comes from biogas and compost