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The EU-funded circular economic climate project MUBIC focused on the transformation of reduced-price agricultural squander into superior-price products one of which is utilised to improve mushrooms, whose cultivation the companions set out to revolutionise.
Far more especially, this product is a new type of mushroom substrate, the material on which the mushrooms are grown. Along with other outputs, these types of as fuel pellets, fertiliser, and pre-dealt with feedstock for more quickly biogas production, the system formed in MUBIC also delivers considerable sustainability gains, says project coordinator Peter Damgaard Nielsen of Danish SME State-of-the-art Substrate Technologies (AST).
It notably boosts the biogas produce from agricultural wastes like straw or horse bedding by about 30 {312eb768b2a7ccb699e02fa64aff7eccd2b9f51f6a579147b7ed58dbcded82a2}, through the prior chopping and grinding of this biomass. The capacity to system wet straw, meadow grass and related material is a specific furthermore level: the MUBIC system for these challenging types of feedstock also will involve pretreatment with nitrogen to split down the lignin in the stalks, Nielsen clarifies.
Successful, circular, environmentally friendly
Using this system, you get far more biogas and you get it more quickly, since the micro organism in the biogas plant can also use the lignin as feed, says Nielsen. The nitrogen utilised for this pre-cure is recovered from the biogas plant, through the cure of the digestate the residues of the feedstock.
The nitrogen is extracted from the digestate in facilities created as annexes to the biogas crops them selves. As of July 2020, operations have started at the very first these types of add-on plant created as a commercial facility, according to Nielsen.
In the MUBIC model, the digestate could, in fact, have started off out as biomass provided by the companions. Our lorries consider feedstock to the biogas plant and digestate again to the add-on plant, where by we dry it, Nielsen carries on.
The dealt with digestate is then transformed into a wide range of products and solutions. Together with the mushroom substrate, these outputs involve fuel pellets that are appreciably far more sustainable than competing products and solutions since they are derived from a type of squander and since this squander is a residue of locally sourced biomass.
The MUBIC system delivers a pelletised substrate whose dry issue information, at 85 {312eb768b2a7ccb699e02fa64aff7eccd2b9f51f6a579147b7ed58dbcded82a2}, is significantly higher than that of typical substrates, which generally normal about 30 {312eb768b2a7ccb699e02fa64aff7eccd2b9f51f6a579147b7ed58dbcded82a2}. Thus, MUBIC substrate offers considerably far more mushroom feed for each cubic metre than competing products and solutions, Nielsen clarifies. Owing to its superior dry-issue information, it can be stored and does not call for cooling in the course of transport more than for a longer time distances in contrast to typical substrates, which could start off to rot.
MUBICs substrate complements yet another innovation produced in the project: a process by which mushrooms grown on trays transfer past pickers on a conveyor belt, as opposed to pickers obtaining to transfer through the shelves in mushroom farms. This specific innovation was perfected by Dutch SME Panbo Techniques, the 2nd spouse associated in the project, as a way to lessen harvesting costs.
Rooted in wet straw
MUBIC, which finished in January 2020, was funded via a Horizon 2020 programme especially created to help SMEs get ready their innovations for commercialisation. With out this aid, the straw-to-substrate idea would have been shelved, says Nielsen, who emphasises that the funding enabled the companions to deliver their notion to everyday living.
AST had to begin with regarded marketing overall add-on crops, but at some point decided to concentrate on the products and solutions generated all through the system instead: profits is generated at quite a few techniques, from raw material that is mainly offered for totally free.
Used substrate from mushroom production is one these types of residue, and a excellent illustration of the proposed circular tactic. In MUBIC, it is recovered as feedstock for the production of biogas, and the digestate still left more than from this system is utilised to make new substrate.
Both equally the new mushroom cultivation process and the many products and solutions from MUBICs circular price chain have been achieved with fascination, with new partnerships enabling the project companions to consider these developments ahead, Nielsen concludes.