FCC Medioambiente, a Spanish firm, has received the environmental award sponsored by Expansión, a financial news paper, and Garrigues, a law firm in Spain, for its research in treating thousands of tons of rubbish for turning into biogas and compost.
Time to make more out of waste
The company received funding worth €3.41 from EUREKA for the project known as EUREKA BIO-EXPERTISE.
According to project coordinator Catherine Milhau, who also heads the scientific development at Spain’s FCC Medioambiente’s environmental services division, though the theory of converting rubbish into renewable energy appears to be easy but practically it is not. She cited examples of how the earlier attempts of importing plants from northern Europe failed to cope up with the large level of fresh food waste in Spain due to cooking methods practiced in Spain. She explained that culture plays an important factor in creation of rubbish and changes in the parameters such as temperatures can jeopardize the process.
The company involved the researchers and engineers from Spain and France to introduce a better method to handle the solid waste treated at the anaerobic digestion plant. The team zeroed on an FCC treatment plant that treats around 200,000 tons of waste a year and located in Valladolid, a place in north of Spain as its pilot plant.
Researchers at Southern Spain located Huelva University researched for the process utilized in anaerobic digestion plants while CREED, a research and development center in France constructed a pilot plant at Veolia Environment. The Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory, LBE and National Agronomical Research Institute, INRA assisted in testing samples at CREED. During the time an industrial engineer from FCC was supervising the testing and investigation procedures at the Valladolid plant of the company.
It took five years for the researchers and engineers to collect details on elements that disrupt the biological progression of composting and biomethanisation and cross check them with Valladolid plant to develop the methodological guide for the process.
The details gained from EUREKA BIODI-EXPERTISE have enabled FCC Medioambiente to get more public contracts to treat urban waste. The company has handled over 2 Mt in 2010 and its turnover increased from €759,547 in 2008 to €18.6 million 2010.
Source: http://www.eurekanetwork.org/