Resource recovery using volatile fatty acids and alcohols platform

To achieve the global Sustainable Development Goals in the UN´s Agenda 2030, it is necessary to both increase resource efficiency and reduce the climate effects of waste.

This project contributes by further development of biogas plants to biorefineries to convert organic waste into new biochemicals and biomaterials, which create a circularity in the life cycle of resources.

The hypothesis is based on the integration of membrane bioreactors (MBR), anaerobic digestion (AD) and bioaugmentation to generate volatile fatty acids, hydrogen, alcohols in addition to biogas and biofertilizers, and will be carried out in 6 work packages.

In this way, the waste will be converted into a wide range of end-user products such as bioplastics, animal feed, chemicals, biofuels and higher alcohols. The biorefinery will be able to be implemented in already established biogas plants.

The project will be carried out in a collaboration between University of Borås (UB), RISE research Inst. and Umeå University (UU).

Several PhD students, postdocs and younger researchers collaborate under leading of established researchers to provide capacity building for future. This project will contribute Global Sustainable Development Goals SDGs of 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 8, 7 and 2.