The project

The REVENUE project in fact aims to find innovative feasible technological solutions for biowaste management in order to meet not only material and energy needs, but also more generally individual and community wellbeing, promoting social impact. The specific challenge is to reduce costs and improve sustainability associated with the pre-treatment step of biomass feedstock while making it possible to achieve of sufficiently high yields in the targeted product in the subsequent conversion steps.

The project, started in February 2020 and will last 30 months, is focused on the integration of an innovative pre-treatment to a) promote high added value fatty acids production from the liquid fraction, and b) biomethane and an hygienized biofertilizer from the solid residue.

The potential economic value that will derive from processing biowaste with the REVENUE platform is to mitigate the disposal costs, to receive revenues from sales of the products, and subsidies for renewable energy.

The project aims at:

1)Developing an efficient combination of physical feedstock pretreatment and biotechnological processes to efficiently valorize valuable components in organic waste of Lombardy territory.

2) Controlling the mixed microbial population within the microbiome to induce selective chain elongation mechanisms from the substrates

3) Developing new downstream processing technologies to extract and separate high-purity target product from fermentation broth through magnetic nanoparticles application

4) Contributing to the implementation of a pilot-scale treatment process to verify the hypothesis postulated in laboratory–scale tests

5) Contributing to a more resource-efficient and sustainable low-carbon economy and to increasing economic growth and employment

6) Defining risk prevention and mitigation measures minimizing bio-hazard impact on health

7) Reinforcing excellence of research and increasing performance, internalization and impact of R&D, spillovers and innovation systems and support high-level education for young scientists fostered by the robust and multidisciplinary specialism offered.

The project, started in February 2020 and will last 30 months, is focused on the integration of an innovative pre-treatment to promote high added value fatty acids production from the liquid fraction, and biomethane and an hygienized biofertilizer from the solid residue.