Last week, technicians of LIFE BREWERY and both LIFE BAQUA and LIFE ALGAECAN projects held networking meetings within the 4th Ibero-American Congress on Biorefineries.
The main objective of LIFE BAQUA project is to establish a new circular economy approach to take advantage of wastes from banana plantation (pseudo stem of the plant). From this pseudo stem, and using mechanical processing, two different raw materials are obtained: high quality natural fibres from one side and the residual pulp on the other side. Treated fibre is going to be used to obtain natural reinforced composites, which, as such, may be applied to the automotive sector, as well as bio-based films, which can be employed, among other applications, in the plantation for agricultural use and in the packaging of fish feed. With the residual pulp, as a great technological innovation, it will be held the development of antioxidant additives which serve as a supplement in the production of fish diets for aquaculture.
In the case of Life ALGAECAN, the technology to be applied in the project is an innovative concept for wastewater treatment, reuse and resource recovery to obtain a high-quality water stream and reusable. The treatment proposed for high loaded and salty effluents is simple, from a technological point of view, with low costs associated to the treatment (both process and energy) and it would be carried out in-situ. The prototype will be powered by renewable energies (solar energy supported by biomass), which will minimise the carbon footprint and operating costs of the process. The final effluent quality will be very high, allowing reuse for equipment cleaning and irrigation purposes.
