Smart Waste Recovery and Recycling

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

Norway is one of the largest seafood producers in the world and according to the Norwegian Seafood Federation, more than 36 million meals of seafood from Norway are served worldwide daily. For the future, Norway has the vision that the aquaculture sector will double its activity by 2030 and it will increase five times by 2050. The salmon and rainbow trout biomass production of 2017 was 1.3 mill. ton with a corresponding sludge (10%Total Solids (TS)) volume of 2.145 mill ton. By 2050 the fish biomass production will reach 6.5 mill ton and the sludge volume will reach 11 mill ton. This generated sludge can be considered a showstopper to reach production targets and therefore, the aquaculture sector will need to invest in future solutions as new and stricter requirements of sludge treatment are expected to be enforced by the authorities. Currently, fish can be raised until harvested, in different types of open cage farms where the cages are placed directly in the sea water or, on land. Lately, different closed cage farms have been developed with many positive benefits e.g. preventing fish escape, avoiding fish lice problems. However, these new concepts need to address the challenges related to the collection and handling of the large volumes of sludge. It is known that 500 000 tonnes of sludge annually discharged from the aquaculture industry is equivalent to the waste generated by 20 million people. The project aims to develop a new technology to convert different types of waste into energy as syngas and valuable by-products ready for recylcing and recovery. The new technology is based on a patent pending application called Microwave Assisted Pyrolysis and Gasification (MAP-G). The project aims to develop and test the reactor at different stages from lab scale towards the pilot scale, integrate it in real value chains with several relevant partners, to advance its TRL from currently 2-3 to TRL 4-5, and to prepare the roadmap towards commercialization by 2026-2027.