Recovery and Reuse through Design and Development (R2D2)
Name of applicant
Isuru Abeykoon Udugama
Institution
Technical University of Denmark
Amount
DKK 1,080,000
Year
2017
Type of grant
Reintegration Fellowships
What?
The objective of this project is to investigate the impact of technical, economic, societal, and customer readiness factors in transitioning resource recovery solutions that are already established in academia to industrially implemented units. The project will employ Process Systems Engineering (PSE) methods and tools to develop a systematic multi-scale multi-dimensional framework that can identify, narrow down and develop resource recovery from a concept to an implementable solution. This project will be carried out in collaboration with Danish bio-based industry producing food ingredients, biopharmaceuticals and biochemical products, all processes which generate large amounts of wastewater from upstream processes such as fermentation, and contain potentially valuable compounds.
Why?
Advancing towards a Circular Economy is a key initiative of the European commission and striving for "zero-waste" production is one pillar in achieving this initiative. In the bio-based production industry resource recovery units can bring "zero-waste" production closer by recovering valuable materials from waste which is both economically lucrative and technologically plausible. However, despite these facts industrial implementation of resource recovery is limited. A reason for this limited implementation is the lack of a coherent method that can be used to identify, develop and implement applicable platform technologies for resource recovery taking into account complex interactions between technical, economic and societal considerations. This project addresses this shortfall.
How?
To achieve the objectives outlined, a systematic model based screening methodology (employing PSE concepts) will be developed, that will efficiently identify economically lucrative resources in bio-based production waste/ intermediate streams, and identify applicable separation technologies to recover these resources. A systematic assessment method will then be developed to select most suited separation technology(s) for a given waste stream that takes concepts from Net Present Value Analysis, Technical, Customer and Societal Readiness. Together, these two methodologies will form one cohesive framework that can be used to identify and develop resource recovery solutions. To ensure industrial relevancy this work will be carried out in close collaboration with Danish bio-based industry.