Application of a practical methodology for the selection of suitable value chains to produce circular fertilisers from secondary raw materials.

Abstract

Background: The growing demand for food products, driven by a growing world population, has increased Europe's dependence on conventional fertilisers, which have a high impact on the environment. In the last decade, new circular fertiliser value chains have appeared as promising alternatives to conventional fertilisers.

Methods: Because of the huge number of alternatives, this study aimed to develop a practical methodology that facilitates the analysis of data related to each value chain to identify and select the most promising circular fertiliser value chains to promote their wide-scale production and use in agriculture, replacing the dependence on conventional fertilisers in Europe. This methodology is based on two stages (funnelling process and scoring system) and considers the 16 criteria (e.g. technical viability, nutrient content, among others) defined in the study. The methodology was tested for 48 value chains identified during the mapping of secondary raw materials in Europe with the potential to be used as circular fertilisers, classifying them into seven different raw materials: urban wastewater (UWW), industrial wastewater (IWW), sewage sludge (SS), biowaste (BW), biological by-products (BBP), treated manure (TM), and digestate (DIG). The funnelling process is based on a GO/NO-GO approach that meets six criteria and allows the discarding of 18 value chains, from 30 to the second stage. The scoring system was a more complete analysis, including ten new scoring criteria.

Results: This system allowed the identification of the potential of the value chains analysed, concluding that struvite from UWW, struvite from IWW, stabilized sludge from SS, composted biowaste from BW, feather meal from BBP, solid fraction from DIG, and spent mushroom substrate from TM are the most promising options for agriculture.

Conclusions: The develop methodology was used to evaluate 48 different value chains with the potential to generate promising circular fertlizers. Seven value chains were finally selected.