nir-vana innovation network

This Italian engineering company offers a wide range of technologies for wastewater and organic feedstock management, aiming at providing solutions for managing resources efficiently and supplying clean energy.

A team with diverse expertise, such as mechanical, chemical, and process engineers and biologists allows the Italian SME to design, deliver and maintain industry-leading waste-to-energy and complex wastewater treatment solutions. Furthermore, an in-house laboratory allows this SME to continuously focus on research and development, improving further its technologies and constantly searching for new ones.

The potential to generate renewable energy from manure is tremendous due to the high volume of livestock and poultry. The solution would be to manage this waste using anaerobic digestion. However, high levels of nitrogen in poultry litter and slaughterhouses inhibit the anaerobic process, contributing to soil pollution, water pollution, and global warming.

Several ammonia stripping systems are nowadays available on the market, such as traditional air stripping; activated sludge, nitro/denitro; anaerobic/anoxic biological processes. Still, they entail operational problems and high costs in terms of chemicals and maintenance.

This innovative process aims to overcome the above-mentioned issues, creating a market opportunity applicable to nitrogen recovery of livestock slurries and digestate from anaerobic digestion processes. Not recovering nitrogen results in a lost opportunity, since it is one of the most essential plant nutrients and to influence crop yields. Moreover, nitrogen pollution costs the European Union between 70 and 100 billion € per year.

This technology for nitrogen recovery replaces the ammonia scrubbing tower with a rectangular reactor which is not subject to fouling and reduces operating costs because no pH conditioning is needed.

The process can be used in:

• digestate treatment
• treatment of landfill leachate
• industrial liquid wastewater treatment.

Currently, the Italian engineering company is looking for new partners preferably from, but not limited to, Europe.

The proposed partnership should be envisaged under a research cooperation agreement, to allow the Italian enterprise to pool its R&D capacities with different partners in order to further develop and improve its technology, benefitting all parties involved.

Advantages & innovations

This technology is proven and does not envisage using PH conditioning chemicals and a stripping tower with plastic supports, replaced by a rectangular reactor which is not subject to fouling. In addition, it allows the removal of up to 90% ammonia, reducing at the same time its toxicity and producing a liquid fertilizer of excellent quality. All these features contribute also to decreasing environmental impact. Furthermore, this process is fully automated, it is a modular solution that can be quickly installed and that requires low maintenance, allowing users to reduce costs.

Stage of development

Already on the market

Partner sought

Type of partners: companies, universities, research centers operating in the field of wastewater and waste-to-energy technologies and facilities. Role of partners: being involved in the process of research and development, helping the Italian SME further improving its existing technology.