F-Cubed – Future Feedstock Flexible Carbon Upgrading to Bio-Energy Dispatchable Carriers

The F-Cubed project aims to develop an advanced process for the hydrothermal treatment of biogenic residues to create solid, combustible intermediate bioenergy carriers for pelleting, gasification and briquetting whilst simultaneously recovering nutrients and olive pomace oil.

F-CUBED approach enables the overall validation of a feedstock flexible process, able to deal with variable feed characteristics, such as size, composition and pumpability. Three types of biogenic residues will be treated: Paper Sludge from cardboard production, fruit & vegetables processing wastes from baby food production, and waste olive pomace from olive oil extraction.

Generally, biomass conversion technologies are developed for specific streams treatment and applications, being consequently limited in their feedstock flexibility and potential for dispatchable distributed power generation. The F-CUBED process has been designed to handle a wide range of biomasses, albeit all wet and difficult to dewater mechanically, and balance the features of different unit operations, in order to meet the requirements of a feedstock flexible conversion technology.

Furthermore, F-CUBED goes beyond current thermochemical upgrading, through the integration of thermochemical biomass conversion with N-P-K recovery, liquid internal circulation anaerobic treatment and advanced dewatering of hydrothermal slurries.