CIRCULAR BIOCARBON: urban waste becomes a resource

Every day, cities produce large quantities of organic waste and sewage sludge, materials that are often managed separately and not fully valorised.

Yet these waste streams contain carbon, phosphorus and other valuable substances that can be recovered and transformed into new resources for industry and agriculture.

CIRCULAR BIOCARBON was created from this opportunity: to develop an urban biorefinery capable of jointly treating the Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste (OFMSW) and sewage sludge, producing high added-value products.

At the Sesto San Giovanni Bioplatform, the project tests the production of biopolymers for the formulation of bioplastics and the recovery of nutrients as ingredients for fertilisers and biostimulants.

Our role

Gruppo CAP is responsible for the Italian demonstration case and coordinates the testing activities at the Sesto San Giovanni Bioplatform.

It provides the facilities, the sludge produced by the wastewater treatment plant and the pre-treated organic fraction of municipal waste, integrating the new technologies with existing industrial processes.

Gruppo CAP designs, installs and operates the two plants for biopolymer production and nutrient recovery, with the aim of verifying that the solutions developed through research can work on an industrial scale. The multidisciplinary approach and the attention devoted to integrating innovative plants into the biorefinery’s standard production cycle make it possible to transform urban waste into resources, building a concrete and replicable circular economy model.

• Sesto San Giovanni Bioplatform: here, organic waste and sewage sludge are treated in an integrated way to produce biopolymers and recover nutrients.
• Zaragoza demonstration plants: they develop additional processes to transform urban organic waste into bio-based materials and products.