Earth BioEnergy

In 2014 the planet produced 3.12 BILLION TONS of animal manure (Berendes 2018). According to the FAO, that emitted 7 Giga Tons CO2-eq, about 19% of the global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). Industrialized animal agriculture produces highly concentrated waste streams that substantially contributes to the pollution of air, water and soil and exacerbate climate change. Earth BioEnergy is developing and commercializing a new technology that converts wet-animal manure into biodiesel fuel, while reducing the environmental footprint, minimizing GHGE by 85% and turning waste into a revenue stream. This approach prevents the adverse environmental and public health issues associated with unsafe management of animal manure. Globally, Earth BioEnergy has the potential to eliminate about 4 GigaTon of GHGE, while generating 2.5Billion barrels of biodiesel. Achieving sustainable animal agriculture and improving the planet’s progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals.

Over the past several decades, the animal farming industry has flourished due to the increased demand on animal products and technological advancements allowing for mass production. In India alone, Industrial animal food production (IAFP) produced about 290 Mega-Tons of CO2 equivalent emissions [1] and 124 million tons of animal manure in the year 2016[2]. This signification amount of animal waste causes serious environmental and health risks when discharged into the environment without proper treatment.

In IAFP, the massive amounts of manure are stored in hog lagoons while it decomposes into fertilizers in an open-air pit. Many of the lagoons are not properly managed. This process releases greenhouse gases and odorous emissions into the atmosphere. Moreover, poisonous contaminants like heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants, such as pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and emerging chemicals of concerns like estrogens and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) can leach into the soil and water bodies. Animal manure is not being treated before it is applied to croplands, leading to adverse effects on soil quality and bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals, antibiotic resistant bacteria and harmful viruses in the food chain. Eventually, this would cause a toxicological risk to human health [3,4,5,6].

Earth Bioenergy is developing an integrated waste-to-energy system. Hydrothermal Liquefaction technology is being utilized to process animal manure, with the advantage of not requiring prior drying. Water in manure acts as the reactant and reaction media during the HTL process [12]. In this process, wet animal manure is subjected to mild temperatures of 300˚C in a tightly sealed vessel. Under such conditions, water has unique properties that allows for the breakdown of organic molecules into their basic building blocks, followed by their recombination into biocrude oil. The oil is then upgraded into biodiesel via a hydrotreating process, it can also be utilized in combined heat and power applications. Preliminary data has shown that swine manure is converted into biocrude oil with a yield of 25% and an energy content of 36MJ/kg, in addition to a solid and liquid products. The solid materials, called Hydrochar, has energy content of 13 MJ/kg, and is used in downdraft gasifier reactor to produce enough heat energy to self-power the system. The liquid produced can be safely used as fertilizer. Further use of liquid product for energy recovery using anaerobic digestion is also being investigated.

Earth BioEnergy's solution is able to serve animal farms in both high-income countries and low-and middle-income countries. Our focus is to reduce the environmental footprint of large-scale industrial animal farming facilities which are being deployed at scale all over the world. In the Netherlands for example, such facilities are producing ten times more manure than what can be applied to crop land. In India, 90% of chicken are raised in industrialized factory farms, and the most of the manure is not properly treated. While our directly-targeted customers are large-scale animal farms, our indirectly-target populations are the inhabitants living in areas near the industrialized animal farms. Such vulnerable populations are the most affected by the health and environmental consequences from unsafe dumping of animal manure in the environment. Currently, we are part of the NSF I-CORPS program where we are doing customer discovery of animal farms and the surrounding communities. We are seeking to understand their current manure management processes, how it affects the surround communities and how we can help both the farms and the inhabitants reduce the health and environmental risk in their communities.

Our directly targeted communities; the owners and operators of large-scale animal farming have a primary need to safely manage their waste streams in a cost effective manner and a secondary need to reduce their environmental impact

Our indirectly-targeted communities; the populations living around the animal farming facilities, whom experience the adverse environmental and public health issues caused by unsafe management of manur

Our solution addresses the issues of safely and cost-effectively converting manure into revenue-generating products, while reducing the environmental and health burned on the surrounding communities.

The integrated Waste-to-Energy system being developed by earth Bioenergy is innovation in a numbers ways: 

(1) Innovation: The Hydrothermal Liquefaction (HTL) technology has mainly been investigated at a bench-top scale and only a few startups around the world are commercializing it, including Earth Bioenergy. 

(2) Innovation: We are developing a hybrid HTL-Gasiciation system that improves energy recovery and enhances efficiency, this system has not been reported in literature, not commercialized (gasification alone is being commercialized in a few places)

(3) Innovation: We are overcoming barriers to commercializing the HTL through our novel and properiatory Solution Plasma-Assisted HTL system. Our preliminary data shows that the Energy output for Plasma-Assisted HTL is 7.5x the energy input, in comparison to only 4x with conventional HTL systems. That means our technology will use less and harness more energy from the wet-organic waste. 

(4) Competition: Thermochemical conversion technologies (hydrothermal liquefaction, pyrolysis and gasification) and biochemical conversion pathways (anaerobic digestion and fermentation) have been investigated for the conversion of animal manure into energy and biofuels [10]. Anaerobic digestion, despite its long development history, requires vast areas of land, long processing times and leaves behind the unprocessed digestate. Pyrolysis requires high energy input for drying, while producing outputs with relatively low energy density. Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) and gasification are among the most promising technologies [10,11]. Both combined, they deactivate the antibiotic resistant genes, kill all the pathogens in animal manure, while destroying the most persistent organic pollutants, including PFAS [18,34].

HTL technology has been utilized to process animal manure, with the advantage of not requiring prior drying. Water in manure acts as the reactant and reaction media during the HTL process [12]. In this process, wet animal manure is subjected to mild temperatures (200-350˚C) and pressures (2-16.5 MPa). At 300˚C, water’s dielectric constant decreases by 3-fold and its dissociation constant is 500x higher. These properties render water molecules relatively non-polar, thus able to dissolve the hydrophobic and non-polar organic molecules and speed up their hydrolysis into smaller sub-structures, before they undergo re-polymerization, decarboxylation and dehydration, producing biocrude oil [13-15]. The produced biocrude oil has a High Heating Value (HHV) of 30MJ/kg and is then upgraded into biodiesel, can also be utilized in combined heat and power applications. Preliminary data has shown that swine manure is converted into biocrude oil with a yield of 25% and an energy content of 36MJ/kg, in addition to a solid and liquid products. The solid materials, called Hydrochar, has energy content of 13 MJ/kg, and is used in downdraft gasifier reactor to generate syngas under high temperatures (800-1400˚C) through of series of reactions. Gasification of biomass, including swine manure has been extensively investigated [20-22].Syngas is then cleaned and used in a genset to produce energy to self-power the system. The liquid produced can be safely used as fertilizer. Further use of liquid product for energy recovery using anaerobic digestion is also being investigated.

[7] Lu, J., Watson, J., Zeng, J., Li, H., Zhu, Z., Wang, M., Zhang, Y. and Liu, Z., 2018. Biocrude production and heavy metal migration during hydrothermal liquefaction of swine manure. Process Safety and Environmental Protection. 115, (2018)

[8] Xiu S, Shahbazi A, Shirley V, Cheng D, 2010. Hydrothermal pyrolysis of swine manure to bio-oil: effects of operating parameters on products yield and characterization of bio-oil. J Anal Appl Pyrol

[9] USDA (2005) USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Washington, DC. www.usda.gov. Accessed 7 May 2020

[10] Zhang Y, Riskowski G, Funk T, 1999. Thermochemical conversion of swine manure to produce fuel and reduce waste. Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research, Champaign.

[11]. Huang HJ, Yuan XZ, Zhu HN, Li H, Liu Y, Wang XL, Zeng GM. 2013. Comparative studies of thermochemical liquefaction characteristics of microalgae, lignocellulosic biomass and sewage sludge. Energy 

[12] Xiu S, Shahbazi A, Wallace CW, Wang L, Cheng D., 2011. Enhanced bio-oil production from swine manure co-liquefaction with crude glycerol. Energy Convers Manag 52:1004–1009

[13] Akhtar J, Amin NAS, 2011. A review on process conditions for optimum bio-oil yield in hydrothermal liquefaction of biomass. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 15:1615–1624

[14] Y. Zhang., 2010. Hydrothermal Liquefaction to Convert Biomass into Crude Oil, in Biofuels from Agricultural Wastes and Byproducts, Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, pp. 201–232.

[15] Chen, W.T., Zhang, Y., Zhang, J., Yu, G., Schideman, L.C., Zhang, P., Minarick, M., 2014. Hydrothermal liquefaction of mixed-culture algal biomass from wastewater treatment system into bio-crude oil. Bioresour. Technol

When animal manure is the feedstock to Earth BioEnergy's system, it get converted into products that are not harmful to the environment and public health. Our main activity is thermochemical conversion conversion of animal manure. this prevents manure from being discharged into the environment where it caused pollution to air, water and soil, in addition to causing water-borne illnesses to surrounding communities. 

Our designed large-scale system is modular and can treat 0.5tons dry basis of animal manure per day, this modularity allows it to increase in capacity up to 7tons per day. 

A measurable effect is the reduction in the amount of manure released into the environment, a wider benefit is the GHGE offset by our technology, about 85% less CO2 emissions compared to landfilling or incineration. Achieving Carbon Neutral and sustainable animal agriculture is the long term change we would see by deploying our technology

Another effect is the improvement in public health, also related to the reduction in the amount of manure released into the environment. a wider benefit is the decrease of water-bone illneses, algal blooms, aquatic organisms suffocation and improved water quality characteristics in nearby water bodies. The long term effect is safe and effective management of animal manure.

one system fits into a 40' shipping container to process 0.5tons per day. That is about manure needed to feed 150,000 person per day. The system is modular and can be scaled up. We expect that by the year 2030, while capturing 3% of the market in india every year, we will have served 600 million people combined.

Within the next year we aim to pilot our system at an industrial animal farming facility in Massachusetts. Expanding from there to large scale production, commissioning and global sales. With a focus on the markets in the US and South East Asia. In 5 years, we will have the capacity to build and commission hundreds of our system around the world in a decentralized fashion and also secure finances to build a centralized bio-crude oil upgrading facility, that can collect the bio-crude oil generated from small scale farms and upgrade it into biodiesel. Increasing profits for animal farms processing their wastes and maximizing impact 

In the next year, technical challenges exist with building a large continuous-flow HTL plant. Mainly around corrosion, fouling and pumping, and also securing pilot funding

In the next 5 years, financial challenges in terms of securing funding to building a central bio-crude upgrading facility, connected to decentralized units processing wet-biowaste, incluing animal manure and sewage sludge.

at MIT, we have the talent and lab space to overcome the engineering barriers. Also the talent to navigate the funding scene and secure capital, both in the Boston area and internationally.

4 students, 3 at the MSc. level and 1 at the PhD level

Our team a diverse background in science, engineering, management and business development. We met at MIT and we share the passion for solving the world's most pressing challenges.

Team Members (click on name for Linked in profile)

1.     Islam Genina: Environmental and Chemical Engineer, D-Lab research staff.

2.     Andrew Tsang: Systems and Mechanical Engineer, MIT SM SDM ’19 

3.     Eliott Donlon: Mechanical Engineer, MIT SM MechE ’20

4.     Hannah Hoffman: Energy analyst and Nuclear Engineer, MIT SM NSE ’18 

5.     Kanika Ghakar: Aerospace Engineer, MIT SM AeroAstro ’20

Advisors:

1.     Prof. Susan Murcott, MIT, Water and Wastewater Treatment Expert

2.     Prof. Wan-Ting (Grace) Chen, UMass Lowell, Thermochemical Conversion Expert.

3.   Mr. Aaron Desatnik, VP, Food and Agriculture, CERES Partners

We are partnering with the Natick Community Organic Farm to provide us with the animal manure