Approaching the industrialisation of volatile fatty acids production from urban organic wastes

Abstract

In a context of population growth, so does the generation of urban organic streams such as sewage sludge and biowaste. These can be subjected to fermentation processes to produce volatile fatty acids, chemical compounds highly demanded in the industry which are currently originated from fossil fuels. This work addresses the scaling up of the proposed technology to provide high-purity volatile fatty acids, optimising unit operations from a global perspective. Thus, experimentation started at laboratory scale to reach semi-industrial pilot scale, evaluating both the fermentation as well as the purification stages. All the information gathered experimentally allowed to economically evaluate the feasibility of building biorefineries for this purpose, therefore approaching industrial implementation.