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Phosphate Rock Beneficiation through Production of DCP “Super-Rock” as a Raw Material for Phosphoric Acid Plants
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The increasing usage of GEOSCAN online analysis in phosphate processing
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LCA-assisted conception of a digestate recovery by micro-algae production
Get PDFThe digestate produced by anaerobic digestion process is a source of nutrients (N, P, K) and organic matter (C content), generally used as spreading in culture to ideally substitute for the use of mineral fertilizers. This type of digestate recovery presents some weaknesses as for example the poor effective substitution due to the relative low content of bio-available nutrients. Thenceforth, a higher benefit for the recovery of digestate could be thought to increase the effective use of nutrients. Instead of direct spreading, a higher quantity of the digestate and the CO2 contained in the biogas could be used in a micro-algae culture. To this end, the BIOMSA system is based on the coupling of anaerobic digestion and micro-algae culture (Figure 1). To assist the eco-design of BIOMSA, the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used. The first system (A) was studied to identify the environmental hotspots according to the functional unit, defined as the anaerobic digestion of 25 000 tones/year of agricultural residues and the production of micro-algae from digestate, in order to highlight the performances of the whole system. The data collection and the inventory building are based on experts’ knowledge and experiments. As the first results show that the digestate spreading is the most impacting step, one of the eco-design options is to send more nutrients and CO2 in micro-algae culture to maximize the recovery through the micro-algae and not through direct spreading of digestate (liquid and solid phases). The system B is based on these modifications (Figure 1). So both systems (A and B) provide different functions and especially different quantities of micro-algae produced. In order, to allow a comparison between both systems, we studied several allocation rules based on the economic value of the outputs, their LHV (Low Heating Value) or based on their compositions in C, N, P. The novelty of our approach is the management of nutrients from digestate and C from biogas to increase the micro-algae production and to improve the effectiveness of the nutrients recovery through a biogas plant. The discussion of results focuses on the difficulty of overcoming the comparability, thanks to LCA, of both systems. The allocation rules used are difficult to perform because biogas, digestate and micro-algae are very different types of products with different C contents, nutrients contents, ICP and economic values. The combination of allocation rules could be a solution.
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The environmental benefits of circular economy strategies in the nuclear industry: A Life Cycle Assessment study
Get PDFIn the United Kingdom, nuclear energy is poised to play a key role in decarbonising the power generation sector in the coming decades. The management of nuclear wastes generated from the nuclear fuel cycle represents a hotly debated topic. The amount of nuclear wastes, and thus the associated environmental impacts, could be minimized via implementation of circular economy approaches. This work builds upon extensive research efforts conducted in the past years at University College London (UCL) in collaboration with the National Nuclear Laboratory, which, among other achievements, led to the development of a pioneering model for assessing radiological impacts in LCA. Here, we demonstrate how Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be used in the nuclear industry to investigate the environmental benefits of two circular economy strategies that aim at reducing the amount of intermediate level waste to be disposed of in a geological disposal facility. The first case study focuses on a novel technology developed in the US for recycling Zircaloy™ wastes, which are used as cladding of nuclear fuels. The second case study investigates the environmental benefits of using depleted uranium to produce uranyl nitrate - a key chemical used to separate plutonium from uranium when recycling used nuclear fuels. The environmental impacts are quantified using the Environmental Footprint 2.0 method and the UCL model for radiological impacts. Our results show that both circular approaches outperform conventional ones across all environmental categories. This is not only because they bring a reduction in the amount of waste to be disposed of, but also because they are assumed to induce a reduction in the demand for mining of primary zirconium and uranium. When both approaches are combined, the environmental benefits range from 4% in the category freshwater and up to 94% in the category resource use, energy carriers (see Figure 1).
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LCA for emerging waste treatment technologies: theoretical approach and practical application
Get PDFOur work is focusing on the assessment of the life cycle environmental performance of emerging technologies on waste treatment, by applying the LCA principles and tools (EASETECH, SimaPro). These technologies aim at the valorisation of waste for the production of bio-based products, the recovery of materials from waste and the optimization of established waste treatment technologies. A summarizing scheme including the feedstock types and the main processes used as well as the resulting products is illustrated in Figure 1. The technology readiness level (TRL) of the examined treatment schemes ranges between 3-6, while this diversification is also obvious within the treatment schemes themselves. The main aim for conducting LCA in all of the aforementioned emerging technologies is to timely inform the design and development process in order to support decision making for future investments.
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Life cycle analysis of different biochar production processes for simultaneous waste management and carbon capture credits
Get PDFBiomass pyrolysis has been extensively investigated to produce biooils, gaseous products and biochar and a number of successful commercial production facilities have been implemented. Gaseous products are mainly utilized for process energy recovery, whereas biooils have found broad applications that vary from food additives to fuels. On the other hand, biochar has attracted a growing interest in recent years as a valuable soil amendment, a precursor for high quality adsorbent materials, as a catalyst, as well as an efficient medium for carbon sequestration. Therefore, biomass pyrolysis can convert waste materials that decompose and generate greenhouse gases into a stable carbon that can offer intrinsic soil amendment properties while sequestering carbon in the soil for hundreds of years, thus representing a net carbon sink. Large scale biomass pyrolysis processes are traditionally based on fluidized bed technologies, rotary kilns, cyclonic contactors, auger or other mechanically mixed reactors. However, all these technologies require addition of external energy and feedstock pre-processing steps. An emerging alternative to produce large quantities of biochar is based on air-curtain carbonators. This technology consists of a combustion process which can handle very large quantities of raw unprocessed biomass materials. The feedstock is partially combusted to generate the process energy while generating quantities of unconverted carbon in the form of biochar and controlling the gaseous emissions by secondary combustion through an air curtain. All the biochar technologies have different impacts on the carbon balance between feedstock, emissions, and products. In addition, depending on the operating conditions and, particularly, the process temperature, the stability of the carbon in the products varies considerably. Consequently, Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is the essential tool to evaluate the carbon management balance between the waste feedstock and the products, and, consequently, to evaluate the potential net carbon sequestration potential of the biochar. Carbon removal markets and corporate decarbonization have been popular topics in recent months. A growing number of companies are qualifying to sell biochar CO2 Removal Certificates (CORCs). Carbon Future and Puro Earth are the two current markets for biochar carbon removal credits and LCA is required for validation and certification. In this work, LCA was conducted according to ISO 14044:2006, ISO 14067:2018 and Puro Earth Annex A: Biochar Methodology to determine and compare the carbon footprint associated with the production of biochar derived from woody feedstocks, from cradle-to-grave, utilizing large scale biochar production facilities employing different technologies. The functional unit is one metric tonne of biochar, and the primary function is soil conditioning and carbon sequestration. The system boundaries for the cradle-to-grave LCA include transporting waste biomass to conversion facility, processing the biomass into biochar using the conversion technology, drying and packaging the final biochar product, transportation to end-user, and product utilization. The system boundaries are defined by a specific methodology, as waste biomass is transported to the conversion facility for processing. GaBi LCA software was used to conduct the life cycle analysis with information gathered from specific industry and regional databases. The carbon footprint is expressed in tonne CO2-eq. and includes all greenhouse gases, directly and indirectly, related to the process. The end result of the net carbon sequestration is in the form of net carbon dioxide removal certificates (CORCs) resulting from biochar production activity as provided by Puro Earth which can then be monetized and marketed to be purchased by CO2 emitters for offset purposes. The CORCs for the different case-studies investigated were determined to be between 1.2 and 2.5 tonne CO2-eq. per tonne biochar. The LCA methodology developed in this work can easily be implemented to evaluate and validate the net CO2 removal equivalent credits offered by any biochar production technology
Forestry Waste in British Columbia ‐ overcoming bad habits and perverse life cycle accounting
Get PDFThe western Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) is renowned for its extensive forests and forestry sector. For a number of historical reasons, practices for “harvesting” trees are BC is wasteful, with large quantities of material left to be destroyed by open-air “slash burning” to avoid providing potential fuel for wildfires. This unused waste is analogous to agricultural waste, or process waste from industrial production. It potentially represents a significant energy resource, equivalent to about 20% of the fossil fuels used in BC. This contribution will cover: - why a potential resource is currently discarded; - how combining LCA with economic analysis identifies the Pareto-optimal uses for the waste, both domestically and as an internationally traded commodity; - why the supply chain means that Canadian wood pellets sold into European markets have a different life cycle environmental profile compared to pellets from other sources; - how current international agreements on accounting for life cycle emissions of greenhouse gases give perverse signals that discourage production of wood pellets in BC. Although the case study is specific to BC, it illustrates a number of general principles in and barriers to “valorisation” of materials currently regarded as waste
Induced pluripotent stem cells for candidate cell line selection of off-the-shelf natural killer cell therapy
Get PDFCell therapies provide a new strategy for the treatment and cure of debilitating diseases such as many forms of cancer, in which the standard lines of care have been unsuccessful. Although autologous CAR-T immunotherapy has shown resounding clinical efficacy, introduction of new treatments is hampered by regulatory, financial, technical, and resource constraints. Allogeneic cell therapies provide an alternative to autologous treatments for making CAR-immunotherapies more available to a broader patient demographic, with the ability to address many of the constraints of autologous cell therapies. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can serve as a self-renewable source of allogeneic starting material for long-term material supply for cell therapies. Creating clinically relevant iPSC master cell banks requires critical sourcing of starting material, somatic cells type selection, vendor qualification, and application of appropriate controls and analytical methods for screening donor material in compliance with FDA requirements. The establishment of good manufacturing practices is essential to create a reproducible and reliable procedure for generation of clinical iPSC master cell banks and subsequent differentiated cell types. These criteria for principles of GMP include raw material sourcing, reprogramming strategy determination, establishment of critical process parameters, critical quality attributes with essential quality control testing, and analytical methods consistent with FDA recommendations. With the benefit of the iPSCs capacity for self-renewal, there is the opportunity for expansive manufacturing capacity to meet clinical and commercialization demands; however, the ability to generate large numbers of differentiated intermediates and immune effector cells (e.g.., natural killer and T cells) from iPSCs can lead to bottlenecks in supply chain requirements.
To address these process challenges, we assessed the hematopoietic differentiation capacity of gene edited iPSCs to various bioprocessing formats from 2D static cultures to 3D aggregate suspension cultures. We applied single-use scalable cell culture vessels, operational and analytical controls, and xeno-free, chemically-defined, culture conditions to generate hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs) during candidate cell line selection studies. This has resulted in robust differentiations to HPCs from many gene-edited IPSCs, which were further lineage committed to homogenous allogeneic iPSC-derived natural killer cells (iNKs) targeting CD19-positive cancer cells. The manufacturing process for iPSC-derived NK cells enabled comparability assessment of all gene edited iPSC candidate cell lines for feasibility of GMP facility fit, scale-out capacities, reduced cost-of-goods, xeno-free chemically defined media formulations, minimal batch-to-batch variability, operational controls for quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA) methodologies essential for creating our “off-the-shelf” CAR-iNK therapies. These results use the critical principles of GMP applied during candidate cell line selection of Century’s CNTY-101 program. Our results highlight the technologies and controls needed to enable clinically-relevant production of Century’s iPSC-derived natural killer cell therapies
Intensification of viral vector production and clarification by integration of perfusion platforms
Get PDFGene Therapies represent an important new frontier in therapeutic development as they have the potential to treat diseases that have previously been difficult to manage. The new gene therapies currently being developed will address larger patient population and/or using higher dosage needed for global clinical and commercialization. Manufacturing improvement is therefore needed to realize the full potential of gene therapy. We will present two case studies which illustrate the next generation viral vector manufacturing process. The first case study will demonstrate how integration of perfusion platforms, alternating tangential flow (ATF) and the tangential flow depth filtration (TFDF) to bioreactor led to 2-4-fold increase of total rAAV8 yield comparing to the current bioreactor process. The second case study will show how the perfusion TFDF platform used in clarification mode was applied to increase lentivirus (LV) yield through multiple harvests. The cell retention filters enabled the continuous harvest clarification of LV particles present in the media during the virus production, demonstrating the potential for continuous upstream-downstream processing of secreted LV vectors. The implementation of the TFDF in a continuous clarification strategy during the harvest led to a total yield of more than 200% potent LV compared to the depth filtration process.
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Scaling viral vector production processes into HyPerforma DynaDrive Single-Use Bioreactors
Get PDFAs viral vector gene therapy processes reach the clinical and manufacturing stages, the ability to scale up those processes becomes crucial. In this study we demonstrate how the Thermo Scientific HyPerforma DynaDrive Single-Use Bioreactor (S.U.B.) offers optimal conditions for growth and transfection of Gibco Viral Production Cells (VPC1.0 and VPC2.0 cells), both derivatives of HEK 293F cells, utilizing the Gibco LV-MAX Production System and the Gibco AAV-MAX Production System. We also show scalability of cell growth from flask to HyPerforma DynaDrive S.U.B. in 50L, 500L, and 3000L sizes, offering particular guidance on key scale factors and experience to ensure process success