Exploratory projects

Considering different needs of a territory, different functions expected from biorefining systems by local actors (stakeholders and interested parties) at the earliest design stage, taking into account the necessities for flexibility and modularity, develop the adaptation capacity of biorefining systems to potential (r)evolutions, and even their capacity to be transformed.

This project is designed to study urine recovery in territories via an innovative extraction process for use on farms, and examine how the implementation of such a structure would impact sanitation services.Separating and recovering urine at the source is of particular interest for increasing the circularity of nutrients, notably nitrogen and phosphorus since urine consists of 86% nitrogen and 60% phosphorus per person.

Some insect species such as the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) can grow on a wide variety of organic substrates ranging from “noble” by-products (wheat bran) to waste such as pig slurry (Singh & Kumari, 2019). This capacity is now seen as an ecological way to recycle some biowaste.

A study carried out by ADEME on food waste from collective catering establishments in France has shown that a restaurant serving 500 guests an average 200 days a year produces between 15 and 20 tonnes of waste a year, or, in budgetary terms, between 30,000 and 40,000 euros in food waste annually

The goal of the EDIFICE project is to develop a method and tools to analyse “What if” scenarios that would help answer the following question: “If this biomass were treated in this type of biorefinery, how would it affect the territory’s sustainability?”

CARIBOU is an exploratory project that brings together skills in social sciences, humanities, environmental assessment and technology to help develop bread recovery sectors.

A systemic vision of the links in the production-consumption-excreta/waste chain provides a basis for reflection and discussion of appropriate enablers for the socio-ecological transformation of cities and territories.