Food, Water, Energy: An Eternal Golden Braid of Value and Sustainability

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Jonathan Trent, late of the OMEGA algae projects, has authored a column on the topic of “putting existing technologies into ecosystems, to increase food productivity and profitability, while conserving water and energy and decreasing environmental impact.” He calls this UpCycle Systems, or UCS to those who adore three-letter acronyms, referring back to the concept of upcycling (vs recycling) as a reuse of discarded material ”in such a way as to create a product of higher quality or value than the original.”

As Trent observes, waste byproducts are natural, almost every living thing creates a byproduct and what nature has taught us is that conservation of material is not achieved by a single system, but by one system using a waste material of someone else’s process as a feedstock for theirs. It used to be called the industrial symbiosis and it is practiced at large scale in Kalundborg, Denmark, as one example.

The UCS facilities combine livestock farming with anaerobic digesters, with freshwater or marine algae and aquaculture, with water treatment and reuse, as well as with fertilizer production–all of which are monitored and controlled by what we call augmented intelligence (AI). Many livestock farms already convert animal manure into fertilizer by composting, and into biogas (methane) by using anaerobic digesters. In addition to biogas the UCS process takes advantage of two additional products from the digesters–digestate and CO2. The digestate, which is itself an excellent fertilizer, is combined with CO2 and dissolved in water to grow microalgae in a proprietary cultivation system we developed called OMEGA. Microalgae, which are fast growing and the most efficient plants for converting light into biomass, are rich in proteins, carbohydrates, and algae oils. In UCS facilities the microalgae become feed supplements for both livestock and aquaculture. The aquaculture, with its excellent feed to food conversion ratio increases the overall food production efficiency. This efficiency is further enhanced by using the concentrated oxygen from algae, which increases aquaculture yields. Wastes from the livestock, anaerobic digester, algae, and aquaculture all provide valuable fertilizer for algae or other commercial plants either within UCS facilities or for outside agriculture and revenue.

Recently in Washington we had some excellent exemplary news on the renewable natural gas front — a perfect example of taking a waste product from the farm (such as animal waste streams, fed to an anaerobic digester to produce biogas). Natural Gas Vehicles for America and the Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas announced that 32 percent of all on-road fuel used in natural gas vehicles in calendar year 2018 was renewable natural gas.

BP, Nouryon and the Port of Rotterdam have joined forces to explore the opportunity of making ‘green hydrogen’ via water electrolysis for BP’s refinery in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, which has the potential for significant reductions in CO2 emissions. The refinery currently uses hydrogen made from hydrocarbons, to desulphurize products. Replacing this entirely with green hydrogen produced from water using renewable energy could potentially result in a reduction of 350,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year based on current circumstances.

Biosolids, the nutrient-rich soil-like product from wastewater treatment, can now be converted into a marketable, renewable fertilizer, which is now being sold to local farms. Lystek has the technology and this month in San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission received its first payment for sale of its biosolids-based fertilizer. Lystek International (Lystek), a North American leader in biosolids and organics management, has partnered with the SFPUC to convert biosolids, the nutrient-rich soil-like product from wastewater treatment, into a marketable, renewable fertilizer, which is now being sold to local farms.

Through its wastewater treatment process, the SFPUC extracts solids from the incoming wastewater, and uses a biological treatment process (anaerobic digestion) to transform the solids into a fertilizer replacement called biosolids – a compost-like product with valuable soil nutrients. Decades of research and use by farmers have demonstrated that biosolids are an effective way to improve soils and enhance crop growth by returning valuable carbon and nutrients to the land.

In Australia, Green Distillation Technologies, which has developed world-first technology that transforms old tires into oil, carbon and steel, has received approval for their proposed Toowoomba plant from the Queensland Department of Environment and Science. The tire recycling plant will be built at the Wellcamp Business Park, near Toowoomba Airport and when completed will process approximately 700,000 old tires per year into eight million liters of oil, 7700 tonnes of carbon black and 2000 tonnes of steel.

GDT’s Chief Operating Officer Trevor Bayley has said that they expected the actual development approval for construction of the plant to come before the Toowoomba Regional Council before the end of the month. READ MORE