Conceptual Design and Operation of an Integrated Mycoprotein Fermentation Process Focusing on Side Stream Resource Recovery
(2024) KETM05 20241Chemical Engineering (M.Sc.Eng.)
- Abstract
- Mycoprotein from the fungi Fusarium Venenatum A3/5 has been used as a meat alternative for a long time but little attention has been paid to the waste it creates. When the fungi is fermenting it uses a lot of water which is sent to the drain after the process is finished. This water contains large quantities of both nutrients and biomass. As circular economy is becoming more important for environmental sustainability, these wastewaters offer great potential for resource recovery. The aim of this report was therefore to evaluate the feasibility of resource recovery from a semi-batch production of mycoprotein. A conceptual design of the process was made using SuperPro Designer to get an idea of the wastewater characteristics. A framework for... (More)
- Mycoprotein from the fungi Fusarium Venenatum A3/5 has been used as a meat alternative for a long time but little attention has been paid to the waste it creates. When the fungi is fermenting it uses a lot of water which is sent to the drain after the process is finished. This water contains large quantities of both nutrients and biomass. As circular economy is becoming more important for environmental sustainability, these wastewaters offer great potential for resource recovery. The aim of this report was therefore to evaluate the feasibility of resource recovery from a semi-batch production of mycoprotein. A conceptual design of the process was made using SuperPro Designer to get an idea of the wastewater characteristics. A framework for deciding which resource recovery option to choose, based on techno-economic analysis and sustainability, was also created. This was then used to simulate and evaluate four different resource recovery scenarios in SuperPro Designer. Two of them used membrane filtration. One was only recovering water and the other one was recovering water and creating fertilizer at the same time. Another option was to reuse the water and nutrition using a treatment of membranes, ion exchange, and activated carbon. The last tested resource recovery method was to create fish feed powder using evaporation and spray drying. A modified conceptual design of the downstream production line was also tested where pasteurization of the fermentation broth was done directly after the fermenter, instead of after several dewatering stages.
The conceptual design predicted three wastewater streams, the first two with low concentrations of biomass but high amounts of water and nutrients and one stream with low amounts of water but with a lot of biomass. Water (76-82 wt% recovery) and fertilizer with a nutritional value of 20.5:5.5:3.5 (N:P2O5:K2O) were extracted using the first two streams. The operating cost of only water recovery was too high to be compensated by the lowered fresh water need. By creating fertilizer as well, the total emissions were greatly lowered and the cost of operation was almost met. To decrease the cost of these treatments a sterilizing method that does not use heat could be used as pasteurization was by far the largest expense. Reuse of nutrition could not be profitable using the treatment method in this study. The ion exchange was too expensive both in capital cost and operating costs due to the large amount of salt in the wastewater. Fish feed creation from the third stream was the most economically feasible option even though it also did not compensate for its operating costs. The biomass recovered in the fish feed was about 30 wt%. The modified conceptual design showed that heat treatment before would lower the required amount of heat treaters needed but make the wastewater streams more similar which would make separation for resource recovery more difficult. None of the resource recovery options had a positive net present value. This could potentially be changed by assuming other selling prices, especially for the fish feed, or changing some of the cost parameters of the simulation which might not have been applicable such as the cost for yard improvements. (Less) - Popular Abstract (Swedish)
- Mycoprotein är ett köttalternativ som de flesta svenskar ätit någon gång i sitt liv. Men trots att det är betydligt mer miljövänligt än vanligt kött har det fortfarande stora brister speciellt när det kommer till vattenutsläpp. I en värld där rent vatten är en bristvara finns det mycket att vinna på att kunna återvinna vattnet men kanske går det också att skapa nya värdefulla produkter samtidigt.
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9151246
- author
- Bjerborn, Agnes LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- KETM05 20241
- year
- 2024
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- fermentation, resource recovery, wastewater, food industry, fungi, mycoprotein, chemical engineering
- language
- English
- id
- 9151246
- date added to LUP
- 2024-05-20 12:08:02
- date last changed
- 2024-05-20 12:08:02
@misc{9151246,
abstract = {{Mycoprotein from the fungi Fusarium Venenatum A3/5 has been used as a meat alternative for a long time but little attention has been paid to the waste it creates. When the fungi is fermenting it uses a lot of water which is sent to the drain after the process is finished. This water contains large quantities of both nutrients and biomass. As circular economy is becoming more important for environmental sustainability, these wastewaters offer great potential for resource recovery. The aim of this report was therefore to evaluate the feasibility of resource recovery from a semi-batch production of mycoprotein. A conceptual design of the process was made using SuperPro Designer to get an idea of the wastewater characteristics. A framework for deciding which resource recovery option to choose, based on techno-economic analysis and sustainability, was also created. This was then used to simulate and evaluate four different resource recovery scenarios in SuperPro Designer. Two of them used membrane filtration. One was only recovering water and the other one was recovering water and creating fertilizer at the same time. Another option was to reuse the water and nutrition using a treatment of membranes, ion exchange, and activated carbon. The last tested resource recovery method was to create fish feed powder using evaporation and spray drying. A modified conceptual design of the downstream production line was also tested where pasteurization of the fermentation broth was done directly after the fermenter, instead of after several dewatering stages.
The conceptual design predicted three wastewater streams, the first two with low concentrations of biomass but high amounts of water and nutrients and one stream with low amounts of water but with a lot of biomass. Water (76-82 wt% recovery) and fertilizer with a nutritional value of 20.5:5.5:3.5 (N:P2O5:K2O) were extracted using the first two streams. The operating cost of only water recovery was too high to be compensated by the lowered fresh water need. By creating fertilizer as well, the total emissions were greatly lowered and the cost of operation was almost met. To decrease the cost of these treatments a sterilizing method that does not use heat could be used as pasteurization was by far the largest expense. Reuse of nutrition could not be profitable using the treatment method in this study. The ion exchange was too expensive both in capital cost and operating costs due to the large amount of salt in the wastewater. Fish feed creation from the third stream was the most economically feasible option even though it also did not compensate for its operating costs. The biomass recovered in the fish feed was about 30 wt%. The modified conceptual design showed that heat treatment before would lower the required amount of heat treaters needed but make the wastewater streams more similar which would make separation for resource recovery more difficult. None of the resource recovery options had a positive net present value. This could potentially be changed by assuming other selling prices, especially for the fish feed, or changing some of the cost parameters of the simulation which might not have been applicable such as the cost for yard improvements.}},
author = {{Bjerborn, Agnes}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Conceptual Design and Operation of an Integrated Mycoprotein Fermentation Process Focusing on Side Stream Resource Recovery}},
year = {{2024}},
}