Beneficial reuse of waste streams
Large waste streams from agricultural, industrial and domestic sources can be upcycled to a variety of products, including:
Animal & human food & nutraceuticals
Biogas/ biofuels
Recyclable materials, bioplastics/ textiles/ paper
Fertilizer & compost
Bio-based chemicals for detergents, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals
Microbes are critical to the cycling of material through the biosphere that supports all life. Technology from Allied Microbiota enables microbes to play a larger role in human supply chains as well.
Upcycling reduces the environmental impact of the original waste, provides revenue and increases the amount of renewable materials in our supply chains. Our microbial products can be applied in each of these areas to:
1.
2.
Remove contaminants so that the organic material can be used for fertilizer & compost
Increase the conversion rates and yields for biofuels & materials.
Some of the areas we work in currently include:
Case Study 1
The production of fertilizer from domestic wastewater
Wastewater
Water from municipal wastewater plants contain a significant amount of nutrients. When these nutrients reach local surface waters, they degrade water quality. The beneficial reuse of nutrients from these sources protects local water quality and provides a valuable source of fertilizer for agricultural use. Allied Microbiota facilitates this process by removing contaminants from the sewage biosolids so they are not transferred to crops.
Allied Microbiota’s bioremediation works during the drying and pathogen removal process to remove contaminants from the biosolids. This combination of processing steps saves significant energy and produces pollutant-free fertilizer.
Pellets of dried material from a domestic wastewater treatment plant to be used as fertilizer
Case Study 2
The generation of biogas from organic feedstocks
Food Waste
Agriculture
Organic feedstocks also can be converted to methane and other fuel gases using a process called anaerobic digestion (AD). In this process, organic wastes are incubated without oxygen to generate biogas.
Allied Microbiota is working to increase the efficacy of the microbes that produce methane to improve yields and shorten digestion times.
A variety of approaches can be used for anaerobic digestion. In this configuration, the suspension of the organic material in a gas stream significantly accelerates gas production.
Large enclosures serving as stirred anaerobic digestors.
Advanced reactor designs promise greater biogas production efficiencies.
Allied Microbiota clients include soybean processing plants and other food processing plants.
