Biomass and organic waste reprocessing - SCWO for sustainable recovery of inorganic materials, emissions reduction and organic pollutant neutralisation

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The UN through its 2020-2030 "decade of action" has highlighted desperate need to 1) reduce levels of CO2 in the atmosphere to avoid serious impacts on climate, 2) improve sustainability and reuse of materials across all areas of society. Organic materials (biological and synthetic) and wastes have a huge potential to support with dealing with this challenge. Organic materials combining carbon and inorganic materials (e.g., phosphates) are vital for global supply chains from the food we eat, medicines we take, through to industrial chemicals and fuels.While these materials are vital to the global economy. Many of these materials are short lived, the wastes of which led to ~10% of global emissions and components such as nutrients and pharmaceutical by-products causing increasing levels of environmental pollution (e.g., water pollution from synthetic hormones and eutrophication phosphates). As the global population continues to grow the need for these materials will only increase as will the associated environmental impacts. Also vital is to secure the supply of feedstocks required to efficiently produce these materials such as phosphates which are vital for the production of fertilisers, which due to intensive use is a globally depleted resource past peek supply.An important opportunity has arisen to use smart design to link these residues and wastes to the sustainable production of the inputs required by industry. To do this requires new technologies to process this mounting of potentially polluting material to recover the valuable inorganic components and prevent them becoming pollutants, for example phosphates are a globally depleted resource key to the production of fertilisers.DCTs technology can take organic wastes and other materials, processing them to recover the valuable materials for industry, while carrying out the equally important task of mitigating the associated environmental pollution and emissions.DTC technology has the potential to be a powerful tool for this emerging need, through its ability to render down organic wastes to their most basic elements and valuable fractions, while generating its own energy. This sustainable process can neutralise almost any organic pollutants and convert organic materials into recyclable inorganic elements such as phosphorus and ammonia. In order to fully realise the potential of the technology DTC will work with Cranfield university to carry out detailed process modelling, and techno-economic analysis and design reviews using the latest knowledge. This is vital to optimise process performance and CAPEX a head of developing a commercial facility for field trials.