Development of an integrated and sustainable system to produce bio-product: recycling of wastewater from OFMSW anaerobic digestion
Coordinator: Dr. Silvana Castelli
The purpose of the project is to develop an integrated biological system to purify wastewater originated by anaerobic digestion of OFSMW, based on duckweed ability to tolerate high nitrogen and phosphorous concentration.
The project is proposing to develop a sustainable and completely natural system capable of achieving two objectives at the same time:
- a biological wastewater treatment
- the transformation of some pollutants in raw materials (starch and fatty acids) that can be used in food and biochemical industries , replacing products obtained from agriculture or hydrocarbons.
The system represents a typical example of integrated biorefinery, as shown in the following figure
Example of integrated biorefinery
In addition we would like to make a contribution to the understanding of microbiome degrading in the rhizosphere of aquatic plants used in the system, highlighting its effects on urban organic waste purification and more broadly on microbial water safety.
The purpose of the project is to develop an integrated biological system to purify wastewater originated by anaerobic digestion, based on duckweed ability to tolerate high nitrogen and phosphorous concentration. This project will lead to the isolation and characterization of duckweed strains showing good trait for phyto-depuration of the liquid fraction of digestate and, at the same time, able to generate biomass.
– to improve system’s overall performance
– to cut OFSMW management costs for municipalities hence reducing the impact on local taxation for citizens
With this project we would like to verify a new integrated production chain that could eliminate the very high cost treatment of liquid fraction from anaerobic digestion process and on the same time could produce new biomass as a source of bioproducts; the aim is to create a biorefinery model.
The project is based on modern and classical technologies
The next-generation sequencing (NGS) approach will give transcriptomics data (RNA-seq analysis) relative to duckweed plants, in order to understand and increase the performances of the plants; The Illumina technology will be used to discover the microbial community associated to the rizosphere of this acquatic plant. The duckweed aviable germplasm collections will be analysed in order to detect the
Phenotypic screening of the the duckweed Biomass will be characterized in terms of composition, yield and potential byproduct source.
Con il contributo di:
Il progetto è stato realizzato con Fondazione Cariplo, tra le realtà filantropiche più importanti del mondo con oltre 1000 progetti sostenuti ogni anno per 144 milioni di euro e grandi sfide per il futuro.
Giovani, benessere e comunità le tre le parole chiave che ispirano oggi l’attività della fondazione.
“Dalla coesione tra le persone parte la nostra piccola rivoluzione – Giuseppe Guzzetti, Presidente – perché ciascuno dia il proprio contributo per fondare il futuro della nostra società su quei principi di solidarietà e di innovazione sociale che sono alla base dell’operato di Fondazione Cariplo”