About

Urban or peri-urban agricultural, agro-industrial and city activities generate sources of biomass wastes still underexploited offering a feedstock for biorefinery. Implementation of small-scale biorefineries have to answer to critical challenges and to present benefits compared to large scale solutions:

• Adaptation of processes.
• Predict biorefining efficiency with respect to local context.
• Improve sustainability.
• Integrate Small-scale Flexi-feed Biorefineries (SFB) in local socio-economical context.

FLEXIBI proposes to use local and all-year available feedstocks to limit transportation and logistics issues. It will address the challenges to process a mixture of different types of biomass (agriculture, landscaping, agro-food industries and post-consumption plant biomass waste), to smooth the seasonal effect and to narrow the biomass supply to urban or peri-urban areas.

This project will implement integrated experimental and modelling approaches (including process modeling and knowledge engineering approaches) to acquire technical data and develop a decision support tool to promote Small-scale Flexi-feed Biorefineries (SFB).

Results

Science/technology: FLEXIBI will develop a unique reference knowledge on the performance of different biorefinery processes in standardised conditions for various biomass sources. Based on experimental results a reliable decision tool will be developed which will enhance the use of underexploited waste as a source of biobased molecules.

Environmental impact: New high value outputs from underexploited waste will save natural resources by using and recycling organic matter. This will increase the current valorisation of biomass wastes and thus limit current landfilling (i.e. medium density fibreboards that have currently no efficient re-use).

Socio-economy of territories: FLEXIBI will contribute to the green economy in urban areas in coordination with local territory econ­omies with the support of an advisory board composed of companies, local authorities, and all local promoters of Small-scale Flexi-feed Biorefineries (SFB). Its imple­mentation will help to validate SFB approach through the use of a decision-support tool that will allow to determine the most appropriate technical pathway, to size the process scale or to define an efficient network of processing units.