ACTIVITIES

To ensure overall coordination & management of the project with the EC and the scientific undertakings.

This will provide R&D for an optimum thermo-mechanical (TM) process for MSW obtained from different sources (regional, socio-economic and regulatory). This will include variations in material feedstock inputs to enable statistical representation of waste profiles from across EU27 and associated countries. It will investigate processing conditions, including variations in time and temperature profiles to ensure both commercial sterility and the use of post processing treatments, such as alkaline hydrolysis and steam explosion to modify physical structures and, to provide suitable feed material for subsequent enzyme digestion. This work will enable the subsequent techno-economic enzyme based degradation of biogenic material derived from TM-MSW in WPs 3- 6.

Appropriate commercial and in-house enzymes will be screened and processes defined to enable the conversion of cellulosic material and other biogenic constituents in TM-MSW. A baseline will be established using a model paper system. Other constituents, e.g. starches, lipids & proteins will be assessed, primarily using established enzyme technologies. Production of clean lignin fractions by enzymatic purification will be techno-economically assessed. Conversion of cellulose fractions will involve testing, evaluating and optimizing enzyme preparations for TM-MSW from WP2. Commercially available enzyme preparations (which are primarily targeted to monomer production), will be initially screened as they are readily available, cost-effective, and broad enough to target a wide spectrum of compounds in the TM-MSW. Hereafter, intelligent modification and design of enzyme cocktails and optimization by novel UMB enzyme activities (including GH61 & CBM33 enzymes) will be used to drive the reactions towards valuable and high volume outputs with a high degree of polymerisation in the degraded material (TM-MSW-D). Identification of output products will be undertaken in close collaboration with industrial end-users to ensure market demand (WP9). Multi-step enzyme processes will be considered. This WP will also define the analytical procedures to verify product and process quality and quantity.

The highest ranked novel enzymes from WP3 according to market requirements will be produced in large quantities using the CPI bioprocessing resources. A pilot 750 litres scale fermentation production process will be developed including appropriate downstream processing for the application. This process will produce sufficient enzymatic material to digest the biogenic component of one dry tonne of TM-MSW. For in-house tailored enzyme cocktails for the specific requirements of Waste2Go, the process economics for commercial enzyme production will be determined (ten thousand litre scale) and included in WP7.

This will develop a process to degrade the biogenic TM-MSW material to TM-MSW-D using commercial enzymes and/or the speciality enzymes produced in WP4 and the baseline established in WP2 with a model system (paper); the processing conditions and reagent concentrations will be determined: volume, time, concentrations (substrate and enzymes), shear rate, temperature, pH, aeration etc. This will enable a performance/cost analysis to be done and a process to be undertaken at a scale of 50 litres to degrade the biogenic material from WP2 using enzymes from WP4, that can be economically viable if scaled up to industrial scale.

This will involve the development of a purification processes to separate the outputs of enzyme digested biogenic material from WP5 (TM-MSW-D). The cellulosic material will be separated into a range of over four discrete narrow molecular weight fractions of oligomeric materials at litre scale. Strategies will be defined for other biogenic fractions. Techno-economic assessment of material purity against application requirements will be determined.

This will integrate outputs of the thermo-mechanical process defined in WP2, the biodegradation process defined in WP5 and, the purification process defined in WP6 on a pilot scale. This process will aim to achieve yields of over 300kg of chemicals from one dry tonne of MSW. The validation of this project objective will be in the production of at least one surfactant on a laboratory scale for use in personal care product applications.

Adopting a recognised LCA approach based on ISO14040/44 (2006), the full environmental, economic & social viability will be verified to provide a net benefit compared to SoA waste management and chemical feedstock supply. This will include an evaluation of the regional & political waste management strategies from across EU27. The technology development will be verified as being BAT using the EU Environmental Technology Verification pre-programme.

Project results will be protected, and then widely disseminated for maximum impact. Dissemination will include international industry seminars, scientific & technical papers, publications & conference proceedings and a dedicated open access web site to publicise project achievements and to enable both during the project and for at least five years post project the monitoring of the economic and environmental impacts of the project achievements.