A CT BETA pilot plant at the company Mafrica enables progress towards "zero waste" strategies in the meat industry

56% of the world's consumption of fresh water for industrial uses takes place in the food and beverage industry. In the meat sector, pig slaughterhouses can use between 250 and 550 litres for each slaughtered animal, with the cleaning of carcasses and equipment and sanitisation of the facilities accounting for the highest levels of water consumption. The amounts used in cattle slaughterhouses are even greater: between 500 and 1,000 litres per carcass. Given that the global demand for water is progressively increasing at the same time as increasingly frequent and prolonged droughts, a transition towards new circular economy models and reducing the water footprint is more necessary than ever.

In this context, the food and agriculture sector needs to adopt new ways to recover and reuse water, such as the one designed and developed by the BETA Technological Center at the University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) in the pilot plant at the meat company Mafrica, in Sant Joan de Vilatorrada (Bages). The plant's technological system makes it possible to recover both solid and liquid waste generated by the company, in order to move towards a "zero waste" strategy in the meat industry. Seven end products can be produced from eight different technologies that have been implemented: reusable water, biomethane, biomass for boilers, nutrient-rich effluents and organic conditioners, biostimulants and reusable CO2.

A second life for waste

The pilot plant, which has been launched as part of the European AccelWater project, which in Spain is being led by CT BETA with the involvement of the INNOVAC cluster and the company Mafrica, is a real example of the potential that solutions based on the concept of the circular bioeconomy can have. The pilot plant was commissioned this year, and it will operate until 2024. The facility is located next to an industrial wastewater treatment plant, and it has two treatment lines.

The first line processes waste water to recover high quality water which can potentially be reused in the industrial facility itself, and a liquid product with a high concentration of nutrients, with the potential for recoverability in agriculture. The second line is the recovery of solid waste, in order to recover energy and produce products with high added value, such as biofertilisers and biostimulants.

One of the most important aspects of this plant is that it focuses on reusing treated waste water, which can be allocated to new uses on premises after undergoing various treatment processes. The technologies selected mean that bioenergy can be obtained in the form of biogas or biomass suitable for use in a conventional boiler from solid waste, and especially organic animal matter that is not suitable for human consumption, such as viscera, intestinal contents, and fats and sewage sludge from the industrial wastewater treatment plant, which can potentially be applied in new strategies to improve sustainability in the meat industry.

Presentation of the pilot plant

The pilot plant was presented this afternoon at the Mafrica headquarters, in an event attended by Isaac Peraire, the director of the Catalan Waste Agency; Mar León, the manager of the Catalan Water Agency (ACA); Eva Espasa, the vice-rector for Research and Knowledge Transfer at UVic-UCC; Laia Llenas, the assistant director of CT BETA; Gerard Masferrer, the head of R+D+i at Mafrica, and Eudald Casas, the director of INNOVACC, as well as other members of institutions linked to the project and government bodies.

Laia Llenas set out the objectives of the pilot plant within the framework of the Accelwater project, and emphasised that "biorefineries like this one show that technology today is not a problem; we have shown that we can create products with added value, and what we have to do now is to ensure they are economically viable and remove legislative barriers." She highlighted the need to involve the government and private companies: "we want to help the food and agriculture sector to be more competitive and sustainable, and for it to have better business models, and that is why everyone involved needs to work together, so that the results benefit society." 

Meanwhile, Eva Espasa described the BETA Technology Center as "one of the driving forces of research at UVic-UCC" and said that the pilot plant at Mafrica "is a very good example of what the research model is like at our university, and of what we want it to be." She defined it with four points: research "which has an international vision and vocation, which creates links with institutions and people from all over the planet; which is innovative, seeking new perspectives, new points of view and approaches, and which aims to be a benchmark in its field; which is applied and conscious, which works to provide solutions to real problems and global challenges," and finally, "which does all this by focusing on issues and areas with a real interest for the area which we belong to and the people who live there, with whom it seeks close ties."

Gerard Masferrer expressed his satisfaction with Mafrica's involvement in the Accelwater project, and said that it is "a good example of cooperation between business and the university" and of how those synergies "help solve real problems and to move towards more circular models." In the same vein, Isaac Peraire said that "we need more projects like this one, which help us change the perspective of waste management by focusing on the source and not on the final phase." He also said that the project bears the clear hallmark of CT BETA, "which is defined by research with real applications, and which provides tangible results."

Mar León pointed out that this project, which "helps to highlight the beneficial effects of the circular economy", meets two of the main challenges for the Catalan Water Agency: ensuring the good condition of the water and the availability of the resource. Finally, Eudald Casas emphasised that INNOVAC needs to be a key cluster for this project and must raise awareness of it "so that it reaches the entire food sector." The event was also attended by Marc Mussons, the general manager of UVic-UCC, and Eloi Hernández, the president of the Bages Regional Council, among others.

AccelWater - a European project

The European project AccelWater's main objective is to optimise water consumption in the food and beverage industry by introducing state-of-the-art water recovery, reuse, monitoring and control technologies based on artificial intelligence. It also focuses on the recovery, management and optimisation of solid waste and energy in order to achieve environmental sustainability, cost savings and the development of added value products.

This project is implemented with four pilot plants in key industries in the European Union: an industrial symbiosis that includes the dairy and beer industries (Greece), tomato processing (Italy), fish processing (Italy) and meat processing (Spain). The project coordinator is AGENSO (Greece), and there are 18 participating partners in five European Union countries. AccelWater has a budget of 9.4 million Euros, and is funded by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 programme. The project officially began on 1 November 2020 and is scheduled to end on 31 October 2024.