ELLIPSE – Efficient and Novel Waste Streams Co-Processing to Obtain Bio-Based Solutions for Packaging and Agricultural Sectors

ELLIPSE project will address the valorisation of two heterogeneous waste streams generated in significant amounts in Europe, slaughterhouse waste (bellygrass or rumen content) and paper and pulp sludge, to produce cost-efficient polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) for agricultural and personal care applications, by the coprocessing with other organic wastes (OW) such as sludge from the dairy industry and glycerol from the biodiesel industry, as well as recovering nutrients to produce bio-based fertilizers (BBFs).

The integration of these waste streams as biorefinery feedstocks will allow reducing the volumes of landfilled waste, opening new avenues for platform chemicals and bioplastics production while creating additional revenue for the related industries generating them, with added advantages of water recycling, decreased soil degradation, groundwater pollution and methane emissions.

 

The ELLIPSE project has posed several ambitious objectives to reach:

  • To apply effective pre-treatments for heterogeneous paper and slaughterhouse waste
  • To improve the yield of VFA production in acidogenic fermentation
  • To obtain PHBV copolymers through efficient and sustainable processes
  • To obtain different PHBV grades according to the requirements of the final applications in the personal care and agricultural sectors
  • To obtain PHBV-based compounds and wet compounds and demonstrate their performance through the production of prototypes for personal care and agricultural applications
  • To validate enzymatic and chemical recycling to recover monomers that will be reincorporated into the production process
  • To recover nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous) to be used as bio-based fertilizers
  • To demonstrate environmental and socio-economic sustainability of new biobased compounds/products and guarantee the safety of the new circular bioprocesses
  • To apply/adapt mature/novel digital technologies
  • To maximize the innovation impact by contributing to the dissemination post-project
  • To determine public awareness and acceptance of bio-based polymers and to support acceptance of scalable bio-based solutions.

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Take a peek at the project brochure!

 

Project Coordinator 

  • AIMPLAS - Asociacion de investigacion de materiales plasticos y conexas, Spain

Project Partners

  • Biobase Europe pilot plant vzw, Belgium 

  • Biotrend-inovacao e engenharia em Biotecnologia SA, Portugal 

  • Novamont SPA, Italy

  • Bio-mi drustvo s ogranicenom odgovornoscu za proizvodnju istrazivanjei Razvoj, Croatia 

  • Fundacion Cartif, Spain

  • Zero Emission Engineering BV, The Netherlands

  • University of Verona, Italy

  • Helian Polymers, The Netherlands

  • RWM Rouleaux Holding, The Netherlands

  • EnCo SRL, Italy

  • Best - bioenergy and Sustainable technologies GMBH, Austria

  • Green Generation Ireland Limited, Ireland

  • Laarkirchen Papier AG, Austria