Skip to main content
European Commission logo
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
CORDIS Web 30th anniversary CORDIS Web 30th anniversary

Turning carbon of complex organic urban waste streams into value-added products

Project description

First-of-a-kind flagship biorefinery valorising biowaste from the city

The EU-funded CIRCULAR BIOCARBON project presents a first-of-a-kind flagship biorefinery designed to valorise organic fraction of municipal solid waste and sewage sludge into high added-value end products. The biorefinery will turn organic waste streams generated in a city into added-value products for industries and end-consumers. Waste recycling has significantly improved in past decades, but a large part of the organic fraction contained in municipal waste is still incinerated or sent to landfills. CIRCULAR BIOCARBON will manage municipal organic waste more efficiently in terms of circular economy, creating green bio-based materials and marketable products through a pool of cascading innovative technologies. CIRCULAR BIOCARBON will set the basis for advancing towards a new circular vision for waste treatment.

Objective

CIRCULAR BIOCARBON is a first-of-its-kind flagship biorefinery conceived to valorise organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) into value-added products: diamond-like-carbon coatings, green graphene, tailor-made bio-based fertilisers, or bio-plastic, as well as a variety of intermediate products. In order to maximise replicability and boost potential penetration in the market, the biorefinery will be operated for three years in Spain and Italy, and consistent business and exploitation strategies will be put in place. The CIRCULAR BIOCARBON biorefinery, organised through a pool of cascading technologies, start from anaerobic process steps (after proper pretreatment) of mixed urban waste streams, of which OFMSW is the main one, in order to treat all the biowaste produced by a medium-size city (at the end of the project, a commercial scale biorefinery will be fully operative). The fundamental objective of the CIRCULAR BIOCARBON project is to open up new business frameworks based on a new circular vision of waste treatment in a city towards a sustainable bioeconomy, to which actors leading the territorial waste management schemes and policies will be brought to maximize impact on the market, on policy makers and on society.

Coordinator

URBASER SA
Net EU contribution
€ 5 165 750,00
Address
CALLE AGUSTIN DE FOXA, N 4
28036 MADRID
Spain

See on map

Region
Comunidad de Madrid Comunidad de Madrid Madrid
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost
€ 8 384 597,50

Participants (10)