Bio-Based Waste Tech: UC’s Key Findings
As the Bio4HUMAN project examines practical pathways for improving waste management in humanitarian crises, biogas digesters and Black Soldier Fly (BSF) technology emerge as technologies with strong potential to deliver both environmental and operational benefits. The University of Cantabria (UC) leads the project’s analytical work in this domain by investigating how different innovations in technological systems that turn mixed organic waste into usable energy or convert the waste into compost and animal feed, while reducing health and environmental risks.
UC plays a central technical role in translating this potential into robust, evidence-based insights. As part of Work Package 5, the UC team is responsible for revising and developing four biogas digester models and two Black Soldier Fly (BSF) models that reflect the diverse conditions found in humanitarian operations. Their work involves analysing waste composition, reactor efficiency, temperature requirements, biogas yields, and emissions, and adapting existing inventory data to ensure accurate correlation of each configuration to a specific humanitarian need. This effort is essential for understanding how different digester technologies perform with the specific organic waste streams and operational constraints encountered in displacement settings.
In this interview, we spoke with Clara Casado Coterillo from UC to explore how on-site technologies can contribute to sustainable waste management, what their modelling reveals about environmental and operational trade-offs, and how these insights will support the broader Bio4HUMAN evaluation of sustainable technologies for humanitarian contexts.
From UC’s perspective, what makes biogas digesters and BSF technology suitable options for solid waste management in humanitarian and displacement settings? Specifically, which characteristics of these systems (such as their ability to process mixed organic waste streams, generate usable energy, reduce environmental impacts, or operate with limited infrastructure) make them particularly relevant for the contexts we are studying?
Clara: Biogas digester technology has been long applied in developing countries as a scalable technology. In many humanitarian settings, solid waste is commonly dumped openly, causing odors, pollution, and health risks. Anaerobic digestion (AD) offers a cleaner solution by converting this waste into energy while reducing pathogens and emissions. Different configurations of AD are available to handle diverse organic feedstocks like food waste, sludge, and agricultural residues with corresponding efficiency and operation conditions. The biogas produced provides on-site energy for cooking or heating, easing fuel shortages. The products from BSF technologies are compost and animal feed and are therefore of added value in agricultural settings. The biodigester technologies screened in WP4 present initiatives in this sense, in different parts of the world, specifically in the European Union. Each of these technologies are targeted regarding waste composition and scalability, so the collection offers a range of technological solutions that could be adapted to the different needs of each humanitarian situation, in terms of variable waste composition, water content, seasonal temperature, and so on. Besides, both the biodigester reactors and the BSF technologies require very limited infrastructure and low expertise for management, so we expect they can be adapted to the case studies of the project, thanks to the multidisciplinary nature of the Bio4HUMAN consortium.
Given that the end-of-life on-site technologies in humanitarian contexts may need to handle highly variable organic waste streams, including human waste, food waste, and sometimes agricultural residues, what assumptions are you using regarding waste composition and total carbon content, and how are these assumptions being aligned with field realities in refugee or displacement settings?
Clara: Given the understanding that waste streams are often an unpredictable and variable mixture of organic waste composition, they require flexible and resilient solutions. The four biodigester technologies that were screened in WP4 aimed to tackle different waste composition issues, energy consumption and scalability, allowing the collection to cover a broad spectrum of operational scenarios from small household units to larger communal systems that can fit the specific needs and conditions of humanitarian contexts in WP6.
On the other hand, the BSF technologies screened to convert organic waste into animal feed and compost in agricultural settings requires very little operational expertise from the workers. Both BSF technologies screened in WP4 address scalability issues, and in the present WP5, the small–scale one was selected for studying the environmental hotspots, in order to offer a fair comparison with the rest of the bio-based solutions analysed in the project.
Temperature regulation significantly affects technology performance and energy demand. How is UC modelling temperature-related energy requirements for each technology system, especially considering that humanitarian environments often lack stable energy inputs or insulation infrastructure?
Clara: The four biodigester technologies studied worked under different temperature conditions, conditioning the operation, biogas efficiency, etc. The approach prioritizes passive regulation methods such as insulation, underground installation, or solar assistance over continuous external heating, ensuring the systems remain feasible and resilient in low-energy, resource-limited environments, for instance humanitarian settings. All these factors are to be considered in the construction stage of the biodigesters.
On the other hand, the main environmental impact of BSF technology is related to the energy consumption of the crushing of waste before bioconversion, and the separation of the residue and BSF drying after the conversion process, which can be tackled by considering alternatives of lower electricity requirements (solar photovoltaic devices or mechanical methods) to reduce the environmental impact and energy requirements. The construction of the small-scale infrastructure of this technology may be reusing plastic containers already available at the humanitarian settings, thus reducing a potential waste on the production of added value products and job generation.
How is UC quantifying and comparing emissions across the end-of-life technology systems, and what environmental indicators (e.g., GHG emissions per unit of waste treated) will you use to inform the project’s sustainability assessment framework?
Clara: From the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) in D5.1, we quantified the environmental impacts using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, applying the EF 3.1 methodology, in accordance with our partners in WeLOOP. Based on the results obtained from the LCA, the indicators that are relevant for the biodigesters are: Climate change; acidification; eutrophication, terrestrial; Particulate matter; land use; Ecotoxicity, freshwater; water use; resource fossil and Eutrophication, freshwater.
On the other hand, the main hotspots for BSF process are Acidification, Particulate matter, Eutrophication, terrestrial, which are related to direct emissions.
Based on your current progress revising and rebuilding the end-of-life technological models — particularly your work on waste-stream characterization, temperature and energy considerations, reactor efficiency, biogas, compost and animal feed production, and emissions — what are your key technical takeaways so far regarding the applicability of these technologies in humanitarian settings?
Clara: So far, we have only evaluated the environmental hotspots of the four digester models and the small scale BSF technology, regarding their energy consumption, emissions, and type of waste. We are starting with the construction stage on the life cycle costing including recycled materials, working labor, etc, that could highlight more on the applicability comparison in the humanitarian settings of the project (D5.2).
Technical key takeaways include that the feedstock variability and temperature effect should direct the choice of one technology or other for a particular setting, both considering the type of waste and temperature variations through the seasons; the operational simplicity and local maintainability facilitate the construction and operational control with a basic training, given the ability to build units using locally available materials that can be discarded from other applications (such as plastic containers in which humanitarian products are received).
Following from these insights, what specific coordination needs do you foresee with other partners (e.g., data inputs, validation requirements, alignment with LCA, operational assumptions, or field constraints) to ensure the models are fully integrated into the broader Bio4HUMAN assessment framework?
Clara: Collaboration between partners was essential, especially humanitarian organizations (PIN and PAH); they have a better understanding of the reality in humanitarian settings. The feedback of the humanitarian partners is vital as to the acceptance and the social and economic indicators of the LCA models, as well as establishing the advantages and limitations of each of the innovative advances in each of these technologies that are appearing in different settings, to their application at the intrinsic complexities of humanitarian contexts.
The multidisciplinary aspect of the project consortium has provided, so far, a broad perspective for developing bio-based solutions by screening down bio-based producers. Humanitarian actors and innovative solutions that may not be yet as commercially mature but may help fill the gap in the development of complex environments, such as those encountered in humanitarian contexts. If we can find innovative technologies that fit these settings, we can build a resilient global society for us all.
Bio:
The University of Cantabria (UC) has extensive experience in international research projects and programmes, participating in 118 projects funded by the Seventh Framework Program (FP7, 2007-2013) and by the Horizon 2020 calls. In the Horizon Europe Programme, UC participates currently in 16 projects from the different calls with a total funding obtained of 4.62M€.
In Bio4HUMAN, UC actively participates in tasks associated with “Mapping the ground and Scoping exercise Phase 1” (WP3), “Scoping exercise” (WP4), “LCA of innovative bio-based solutions” (WP5), and “Socio-economic and governance aspects evaluation” (WP6).