Enhancing Bioenergy Recovery from Agro-food Biowastes as a Strategy to Promote Circular Bioeconomy

Agro-food industries produce large amounts of wastes challenging innovative and efficient valorisation strategies promoting the circular bioeconomy concept. Anaerobic digestion technology is an interesting route for bioenergy recovery in the agro-food chain sector. In this work, a simple approach is proposed for assessing energy performance of livestock manure and mixed sewage sludge, as substrate by coupling the potential addition of several agro-food biowastes (co-substrate: fruit and vegetable biowastes, fish canning industry, other manures, coffee wastes, and non-edible crops). The results obtained showed an increase of energy performance indicator ranging from 30 to 250% and 62 to 539%, for livestock manure and mixed sewage sludge, respectively. This conceptual approach for feedstocks promotes the circular bioeconomy as it encourages the stakeholders to a smart use of anaerobic biotechnology at rural-level or urban-level.

Automated summary

This study proposes a simple approach to assess the energy performance of livestock manure and mixed sewage sludge by adding various agro-food biowastes as co-substrates, which significantly increases the energy performance indicator. This conceptual approach promotes the circular bioeconomy by encouraging stakeholders to utilize anaerobic biotechnology at a rural or urban level.