The REBOOT project is a European Research Council funded project under the ERC- Starting Grant scheme for young researchers. The 1.5m € grant was awarded to group leader Patrick Biller and the project started in January 2020, scheduled to last 5 years.
The Project was funded under Grant agreement number 849841 and the official CORDIS website in multiple languages can be found here at https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/849841
There are several different ways to treat wastewater, detect and recycle valuable materials instead of disposing of them. However, existing technologies of wastewater treatment and management do not address significant environmental challenges such as nutrient circularity and climate change. The EU-funded REBOOT project proposes an advanced technology that recovers precious materials from wastewater, treats them and generates carbon-neutral combustibles. The hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) technology employs high temperature and pressure to produce bio-crude that is a product with properties similar to those of petroleum. Bio-crude can be used in a variety of advanced applications such as bio-bitumen or renewable aviation fuel. The technology will be tested on pilot continuous reactors aiming to offer a new waste management concept.
The specific objectives of the REBOOT project are to bring the HTL technology to the next stage. Despite the recent advances in HTL research and reactor development there are major outstanding scientific issues which scientists have not been able to solve. The largest hurdles, which we will apply our innovative concepts to are:
1. Recovering P from the HTL reactor inline.
2. Efficient catalytic upgrading of bio-crude to high quality fuels.
3. Valorizing carbon in the process water while recovering nutrients.
These challenges will be addressed by investigating basic scientific questions which can then be applied in continuous flow with the purpose of upscaling and eventually commercialization.
We will study the salt behavior in multiphase hydrothermal systems with the aim of full phosphorous recovery. The idea is that we can tailor the reaction conditions to achieve optimum precipitation of salts which can then be recovered using specifically designed high pressure separators. The recovered phosphorus will be applied as fertilizer, closing the nutrient circle from wet wastes.
In terms of bio-crude quality we will apply advances in-site catalysts in the HTL reactors. This can only be achieved if the inorganics are efficiently separated in the HTL reactor and stable catalyst supports are identified which can withstand the high pressure, high temperature aqueous environment. The aim is to produce a bio-crude which matches the specifications required for direct integration into existing oil refineries or which has improved properties for dedicated upgrading to jet fuel.
Finally, we will investigate the beneficial use of the HTL process water. This fraction makes up a large amount of the products from HTL due to the wet feedstocks used mainly containing water. The process water is highly contaminated with carbon and nutrients which poses a threat and opportunity. We will use a combination of chemical, electro-chemical and biologic processes to valorize this resource efficiently to utilize all product phases, recover carbon and nutrients and establish a fully circular wet waste treatment solution.
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 849841)
