Public Funding for Stopford Limited

The management of difficult-to-recycle waste streams is a global issue, resulting in potential resources being sent to landfill or incineration. Singapore's "Zero-Waste" target requires sustainable waste and resource management to drive climate resilience, resource resilience and economic resilience. Nevertheless, population growth and poor recycling awareness is a huge problem necessitating Singapore's reliance on incineration to manage a lack of landfill capacity: Singapore's only landfill (Semaku Island is forecast to close at least 10 years sooner than originally planned. Similarly, within the UK there are numerous targets and initiatives to increase recycling rates and eliminate the loss of resources. However, organically contaminated plastics remain a significant challenge. In parallel, the built environment is a major contributor to carbon emissions worldwide, and there is a need for sustainable and locally-sourced construction materials to improve the credentials of this difficult to decarbonise industrial sector. This project integrates two advanced recycling technologies to provide an innovative solution that converts these hard-to-recycle municipal solid wastes into a sustainable bitumen that can be used to minimise the environmental impact of fossil fuel derived bitumen. In the first process, our Solvergy technology, which was developed with support from UKRI, is used to depolymerise the waste to produce a base oil. This then undergoes transformation in Magorium PTE's NEWBitumen process, which was developed with support from Enterprise Singapore, so that a sustainable bitumen product is manufactured. The final product meets environmental and industry specifications and can be used for asphalt manufacture to pave "green roads".

The UK's net zero strategy for decarbonisation requires all sectors of the UK economy to meet the net zero target by 2050\. The UK concrete and cement industry produced 7.3 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2018 and currently accounts for around 1.5% of the UK's CO2 emissions \[1\]. Fuel switching to low-carbon fuels in this sector could potentially reduce emissions by 16% \[1\]. The cement industry has made significant progress with fuel switching to hydrogen, with previous studies demonstrating technical feasibility. However, the storage and transportation of hydrogen is technically challenging, and hydrogen fuel costs are prohibitive. This project will assess the use of ammonia as a low-cost, low-carbon hydrogen carrier, evaluating the most economical method of on-site ammonia cracking to generate hydrogen for use in kilns in the cement industry. The innovation lies in using ammonia as a hydrogen carrier with novel local autothermal cracking of ammonia into a hydrogen fuel for use in cement manufacturing. This technically and commercially innovative approach has the potential to make hydrogen use on dispersed (not located within proposed hydrogen hubs or industrial clusters) sites economically viable. Ammonia has been selected as a hydrogen carrier due to its high volumetric energy density, making it easier and cheaper to store and transport than hydrogen. The volumetric hydrogen density of ammonia is 45% higher than that of liquid hydrogen. The project will also investigate the various tiers of the UK's existing ammonia supply chain network for the suitable transportation, offloading and storage of ammonia as a hydrogen carrier in meeting the cement industry's needs. Ammonia is rapidly being considered the most promising long-term molecule for global energy markets, but few feasibility studies have assessed whole supply chain viability. If this is economically feasible one of the project partners, Hanson Cement, will adopt the scheme to supply hydrogen to their cement kilns, helping decarbonise the UK cement industry and accelerating the adoption of hydrogen by other UK industries. \[1\] Mineral Products Association: UK Concrete and Cement Industry Roadmap to beyond Net Zero. 2020

This project will develop CircuPlast, an advanced eco-friendly technology, to recycle waste PET-based plastics (e.g., pots, salad trays, and tubs), by converting them to commodity compounds that can be used to manufacture fresh plastics. Currently, only half of the PET waste in the UK is recycled, with the remainder going to landfill or incineration. This is due to limitations in present-day recycling processes: mechanical recycling is widely utilised but degrades the physical properties of PET, limiting lifespan and useability; pyrolysis converts PET to a mixture of gases, tars and other substances but does not yield the chemicals desired for PET production. Our technology, CircuPlast, utilises the unique powerful properties of hot compressed water (HCW) at elevated pressures and temperatures to convert PET waste into high-value chemical compounds, namely terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG), which can then be used to manufacture fresh PET plastic. This technology will increase the overall recycling rate for PET and thereby help prevent the release of plastic waste into the environment whilst also reducing the carbon emissions associated with plastic manufacture -- by supplanting fossil fuel derived feedstocks with sustainably sourced alternatives. This project will demonstrate the applicability of CircuPlast to PET recycling, employing a laboratory-scale batch reactor to optimise process conditions and generate experimental data, which will be integrated into a computer model of the process and utilised to design an industrial scale continuous process. The scaled-up process design will include PET feedstock preparation, hydrolytic conversion by HCW, and separation of product/by-product streams to achieve an efficient, environmentally friendly route to high purity TPA and EG. Successful outcome will lend an invaluable platform to take the technology forward to a pilot scale demonstrator. As well as helping to address the well-documented issues relating to plastics in the environment, this project will also seek to enable a truly circular economy approach to the management of PET plastics packaging, especially as current mechanical recycling processes are limited to non-contaminated and non-deteriorated PET waste.

ECOSMART:2 will demonstrate the smart integration of a novel, enhanced anaerobic digestion (AD) process with solar technology to form the basis of a circular economy model, providing affordable, clean, secure energy access. Through development and operation of the ECOSMART:2 modules, new integrated UK-Nigerian enterprises and supply chains will be established, aligning social and gender considerations with economic and environmental benefits. With a focus on valorising agri/food waste streams (e.g. cassava and water hyacinth), ECOSMART:2 will ensure a high proportion of beneficiaries are women and those on low incomes. ECOSMART:2 will build on the consortium's expertise, utilising locally available materials and low-cost components to ensure affordability, and reducing feedstock retention time through system design to to accelerate the AD process. It will also produce soil amenders and fertiliser to replace expensive, synthetic fertilisers, thus supporting local, sustainable agricultural practices. With a 4.5-year payback, this model of affordable, low carbon, secure bioenergy will tap into Nigeria's £7.45Bn microgrid market to support enterprise and capacity building opportunities with operator training and local manufacture as well as up-skilling both upstream and downstream enterprises/supply chains for the provision of feedstock and the sale of energy and fertiliser. AD and control systems will be adapted by UK SMEs for global commercial opportunities. With a focus on flexible energy use and affordability, advances in demand-side management and microgrid technology, ECOSMART:2 presents developing countries with an opportunity to leapfrog expensive, centralised infrastructure.

This project seeks to formulate and trial balanced N:P:K fertilisers with trace elements, by combining and processing residues from the bio-energy, agricultural and waste management sectors; digestate and ash. The innovation in this project will be to extract the nutritional and crop enhancing chemical value from these waste streams to formulate a suite of fertiliser products with consistent specification that offers performance akin to that of conventional manufactured fertiliser. Sourcing nutrients from waste materials presents a cost-effective opportunity to maintain primary productivity whilst decarbonising farming through avoidance of energy intensive mineral based fertilisers.

This project will seek to assess and validate a novel process technology that will enable the indiscriminate recycling of currently non-recyclable mixed plastics packaging waste and increase the recycled content of plastics packaging, whilst preventing the release of plastics waste into the environment. Using water as a green solvent, CircuPlast, our super critical water (SCW) technology seeks to enable the indiscriminate recycling of plastics (PP, PE, LDPE, HDPE and laminates) into a chemical feedstock for plastics manufacture, offsetting the requirement for fossil-oil derivatives for plastics production. Through the design, development and testing of a laboratory-scale test rig, this project will therefore seek to assess the applicability of CircuPlast for the conversion of non-recyclable waste plastics packaging into chemicals suitable for the manufacture of plastics. Through operation of the rig, in parallel with process modelling, this project will enable the operational performance of CircuPlast to be optimised and verified, with the resultant data being used to inform the scale-up and economic performance of a commercial scale facility. Furthermore, this project will also seek to identify how CircuPlast can be deployed within the waste plastics packaging supply chain, enabling highly efficient recycling of plastics whilst providing a sustainable source of chemical feedstock for primary plastics manufacture. As well as helping to address the well documented issues relating to plastics in the environment, this project will also seek to enable a truly circular economy approach to the management of non-recyclable waste plastics packaging.

This project seeks to fast-track the testing, scale-up and design of a novel mobile microwave induced plasma (MIP) gasification technology, to provide both flexible and additional capacity to enable the safe and sustainable disposal of COVID‑19 related clinical waste. With clinical waste arisings being reported to have increased by 600% in regions of high COVID-19 infection rates (Wuhan Ministry Emergency Office/current Defra Survey of Waste Industry on COVID-19 Impacts), additional waste treatment capacity is required to serve existing hospitals and new temporary medical/healthcare facilities that are being erected globally (e.g. NHS Nightingale Hospitals) to prevent the risk of disease transmission, associated with the transportation and handling of contaminated waste streams. The MIP gasification technology will provide healthcare trusts and hazardous waste management companies with an alternative to offsite incineration, enabling waste to be treated safely and sustainably onsite, whilst reducing the costs associated with waste disposal (c.a. £600 - £1,500 per tonne) and energy demand through the provision of renewable energy. The adoption of plasma gasification systems for waste destruction has been hindered due to operational issues relating to electrode corrosion and high parasitic loads, rendering facilities only economic at a large scale (1000 tpd). As such conventional systems are uneconomic for onsite deployment for the treatment of clinical waste. Therefore, this project will focus on the rapid testing and scale-up of our highly efficient modular MIP gasification technology to enable viable onsite management of COVID-19 clinical waste at a scale of 1000 tpa. The outputs from the study will comprise design and prototyping of a new MIP torch technology (which will be patented) and the design of a mobile package plant for COVID-19 clinical waste destruction (which will be patented), and an assessment of the energy generation potential of the plant. It is anticipated that the outputs from this study will facilitate further fundraising in order to commercialise the technology. Enabling the destruction of COVID-19 clinical waste onsite, will present both healthcare trusts and hazardous waste management companies with an opportunity to alleviate capacity issues and safety issues relating to the disposal of clinical waste, whilst also enabling an opportunity to reduce grid-based eissues nergy demand through the generation of low-carbon energy. As such this project presents the global health care sector with a novel process to enhance the safety and sustainability of COVID-19 clinical waste disposal whilst reducing operational costs and carbon emissions.

This project will seek to assess and validate a novel process technology that will seek to enhance plastics packaging waste recycling rates and increase the recycled content of plastics packaging, whilst preventing the release of plastics waste into the environment. Using water as a green solvent, our super critical water (SCW) technology aims to enable the indiscriminate recycling of plastics (PP, PE, LDPE, HDPE and laminates) into a chemical feedstock for primary plastics manufacture, offsetting the requirement for fossil-oil derivatives for plastics production. This project will therefore seek to assess the applicability of our SCW for plastics recycling, enabling the preliminary design of a commercial scale plant to be completed, and enabling a review of both capital and operational costs. The project will also seek to identify how this novel technology can be deployed within the waste plastics packaging supply chain, enabling highly efficient recycling of plastics whilst providing a sustainable source of chemical feedstock for primary plastics manufacture. As well as helping to address the well documented issues relating to plastics in the environment, this project will also seek to enable a truly circular economy approach to the management of waste plastics packaging.

Increasing the efficiency of energy from waste schemes has been a long-term goal for the sector, especially for advanced thermal treatments (ATTs) such as gasification. Despite ATTs being more efficient than mass burn, there are only a limited number of ATT plants in the UK as the efficiency gains are often to low to overcome high capex/opex costs. We believe that our microwave plasma (MIP) technology will improve the efficiency of ATTs and make them a more viable proposition to generate heat and power from our ever increasing waste arisings. Our research suggests that using the exhaust gases with our MIP technology as a plasma gas, we can generate a hydrogen-rich synthesis gas via plasma reactions, that has a higher CV than current technologies. A higher CV product means that ATTs can generate more power with lower CO2 emissions per unit energy. Our research also suggests that the hydrogen rich gas can be used not only in gas engines and boilers but also in high temperature fuel cells (HTFCs). Given that the cost of HTFC are decreasing, our MIP technology can make the use of this highly efficient fuel cell technology. This project builds on previously funded research and will remove significant barriers to technology uptake for low carbon energy from waste using ATTs and HTFCs.

This project seeks to formulate complete, (N:P:K) balanced, agricultural fertilisers by combining and processing bio-energy wastes; anaerobic digestate, and ash from thermal conversion of woody biomass. The innovation in this project will be to extract the nutritional and land conditioning value from these two waste streams to formulate a product with an exact specification that offers superior performance to conventional manufactured fertiliser products, thereby increasing primary productivity by up to 10%. Sourcing nutrients from waste materials presents a more environmentally and geo-politically sustainable approach to conventional fertilisers sourced from finite sources of phosphorus (rock phosphate), and highly energy-intensive and price-sensitive nitrogen, thereby improving food security. Given the reliance on made fertilizer for maintaining primary productivity and the global demand for these products, innovation in this area presents a significant commercial opportunity for SEE.

There is a real need to de-carbonise energy production in order that Governments meet their obligations to reduce fossil fuel derived carbon emissions and to meet renewable energy generation targets. Using sustainable sources of wood as a fuel is one such method of reducing the CO2 emissions associated with energy production; however, wood has a high moisture content, low energy density, has variable combustion properties and there are considerable costs incurred in modifying existing power plants for co-firing. Consequently, power producers are looking increasingly to torrefaction as a method of upgrading woody biomass to produce energy dense and renewable "biocoal", but technology development has been hampered by engineering problems and economic issues. The main aim of this proposal is two-fold: to enhance and assess the techno-economics of using novel microwave induced plasma (MIP) technology to make biocoal; and to use a systems approach to identify the optimum position and scale of the MIP technology within the biomass supply chain so that the benefits of biocoal can be realised.

Slag is a by-product of metal smelting, and at least 43m Metric Tonnes of it are known to be produced every year in the process of refining metals & making alloys. Slag is used in low value applications such as ballast in concrete and in aggregate road mat'ls. However, slag retains significant amounts of metals & these are sometimes recovered by remelting the slag, but this is extremely expensive with a very high energy burden and Carbon footprint. Our proven "Recyclamet" concept is to use a novel technology to selectively break down the non-metallic components of slag from the metallic particles. We have completed a proof of concept project, adding our own innovations to this process and the results demonstrate excellent separation of all metal from non-metal particles. The benefits of our process vs existing process are: • >90% saving in energy consumption, cost & CO2 footprint • Rapid turnaround of material, • Reduced landfill • Retain control of metal recovered. • Smelters can recover more metal and on-site, removing the need for transport elsewhere, • Maximise the value of outputs • Recovery of salt as an added revenue stream.

The UK paint market is currently the fourth largest in Europe, creating enough waste each year to fill 40 Olympic sized swimming pools (40 x 2,500 m3 = 100,000 m3 ). Thus, when developing new paint formulations, the industry must balance the performance of the paint with its environmental impact. Depending on the intended end-use, some paints contain a number of hazardous substances and heavy metals, requiring specialist disposal via licensed contractors. Typical removal costs range between £500 & £1,000 per tonne of waste & rising with increasing landfill disposal costs. Leachable metals present in untreated paint sludge pose significant risk, since many have been shown to be bio-accumulative and toxic within the environment. The environmental impact and high cost associated with disposal of commercial paint sludge has led EncapsuWaste to create a novel encapsulation process that cost effectively diverts paint waste from landfill. Our process aims to lock-up the leachable metals fraction, creating a cleaner, more economical disposal process, while significantly reducing the environmental impact of the waste stream. The problems associated with hazardous paint waste disposal are not confined to the UK and as such, EncapsuWaste is hopeful that future technological and market developments will facilitate international expansion. The benefits of the proposed process versus existing disposal are expected to be: Significant reduction in toxic waste to landfill Reduction in toxic waste leaching and its build-up in groundwater Reduction in disposal/treatment cost of hazardous paint waste Production of a useful filler for paint manufacture or concrete production with a commercial value

There is a real need to de-carbonise energy production in the UK and elsewhere in order that Governments meet their obligations set by the Kyoto Protocol and meet renewable energy generation targets. Using sustainable sources of wood as a fuel is one such method of reducing the CO2 emissions associated with energy production. However, wood has a high moisture content, low energy density, has variable combustion properties and there are considerable costs incurred modifying existing power plants for co-firing. As result the energy sector is looking increasingly to torrefaction to produce an energy dense and renewable "bicoal" from wood. Torrefaction is low temperature heating of wood in the absence of oxygen to produce a char-like fuel that, once pelletised, has properties similar to coal. However, the economics of existing torrefaction technology has yet to be proven on an industrial scale and we believe that our microwave induced plasma torrefation (MPT) technology is a more cost effective way to torrefy wood. The overall objective of our project is to develop a prototype MPT demonstration reactor for cost effectively converting wood pellets to biocoal.

Through a detailed market research and exploitation study this project will assess the commercial potential of developing soil conditioning products from biomass (and waste biomass) combustion residues (BCRs), principally ash byproducts. Preliminary research indicates that ash from converting biomass to energy (principally woody biomass) possess unique chemical and physical properties with potential applications in agricultural and horticultural sectors: In short, BCRs may have beneficial effects when applied to land. In recognition of this opportunity, Stopford proposes to develop a novel “technological upgrading” BCR recovery process which offers a cost-effective and environmentally sustainable circular-economy approach to the management of BCRs. This concept would provide an innovative solution to >100,000 tonnes of BCR produced annually in the UK (a conservative estimate based on the production of the five largest currently operating biomass plants in the UK with a total fuel demand of ~2,000,000 tpa) and produce a sustainable alternative to mineral based soil conditioning products. Stopford will use the market study to examine market barriers and drivers for uptake of such a product in agriculture, as well as the current fertiliser and soil-conditioner market. The study will also clarify Stopford’s interpretation of the current state of the biomass ash resource base in the UK. It will facilitate an understanding of critical information on key market indices that will drive market entry and acceptance for end products such as fertilisers, growth substrates, liming agents and soil stabilisers. A regulatory review and engagement with relevant authorities will be undertaken as part of this study to highlight potential bottlenecks that must be overcome in order to bring the technology to the market. A final report will detail the findings of the study, and provide information to establish a framework for an R&D program for the novel BCR recovery process.

This project will see the development and demonstration of a novel, highly efficient, low cost technology for the conversion of waste into low-carbon energy. The novel microwave-induced plasma gasification facility will be deployed at the United Utilities (UU) Ellesmere Port site as a basis of screening waste gasification. The facility will help reduce the volume of UUs waste being sent to landfill and enable the recovery of renewable energy for use on site. The exceptionally high temperatures produced by plasma during gasification will deem the facility suitable for the conversion of a wide range of feedstocks into energy spanning municipal and commercial waste streams. The facility will also be eligible for Government fiscal incentives for renewable energy generation. The technology therefore presents industry with a viable technology for the recovery from energy from biomass and waste delivering increased performance and at a lower CAPEX than existing technologies.

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