Adriatic Sea Pilot aims to optimise the valorisation process of various by-products from seafood processing industries of the port of Ancona (Italy). Hydro-cyclone, hydrolysis reactor, pyrolyser, and composting reactor have been developed to implement a biorefinery based fish and mollusc discards and producing bio-based fertilisers (BBFs) (Figure 1&2).
For the pre-treatment of mollusc discards, hydro-cyclone is used after mollusc shredding, achieving effective separation of inorganic and organic fractions. The latter along with fish wastes (being rich in proteins) are used for enzymatic hydrolysis in a 100-L pilot reactor to produce protein hydrolysates (PH). Their residues along with “renewable” bulking agents (pruning waste and sawdust) are used as feedstock mixture for composting to obtain compost-biochar composite. All these processes will be optimised and evaluated in a comprehensive way, looking for the most eco-efficient and feasible biorefinery scheme. Previous evaluation of this biorefinery has been published in “Waste Management” journal (Andreola et al., 2023).
Figure 1: Pyrolyser
Figure 2: Hydro cyclone (a), Compost reactor (b), Hydrolysis reactor (c)