Clean biofuel production and phytoremediation solutions from contaminated lands worldwide

The overall objective of the H2020 Phy2Climate project is to build the bridge between the phytoremediation of contaminated sites with the production of clean drop-in biofuels. As the project aims for the production of high-quality drop-in biofuels like marine fuels (ISO 8217), gasoline (EN 228) and diesel (EN 590), a biorefinery concept is employed with the thermo-catalytic process (TCR®) at its centre. The produced biofuels will present no Land Use Change risks, thus, the phytoremediation will decontaminate lands from a vast variety of pollutants and make the restored lands available for agriculture, while improving the overall sustainability, legal framework, and economics of the process. In this way, Phy2Climate aims at significantly contributing to the Mission Innovation Challenge for sustainable biofuel production and to almost all UN Sustainable Development Goals, as well as to the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, that is part of the European Green Deal, and to the new EU Soil Strategy for 2030 adopted in 2021. On the one hand, it is unquestionable that there is a growing demand for land, which increases tensions among the different groups of users. Land is a finite resource, and the main competitors are Feed, Food & Fuel. From the available worldwide arable land, about 71% is dedicated to animal feed, about 18% to food and only about 4% to biofuels (another 7% is for material use of crops). The multiple uttered food vs fuel debate is, actually, a food vs feed debate. However, the increasing demand for biofuels and biobased products also contributes to this tension, but in a much smaller dimension. The increasing land demand for energy crops leads to direct and indirect Land Use Change (iLUC), causing deforestation, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity and vital water resources. On the other hand, there is a significant area of land which is contaminated and, therefore, unusable for any purpose. Even worse, the investigation, registration as “contaminated site”, as well as the remediation and management of such areas are very cost-intensive, adding even more fuel to the fire.[http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-85142472026&partnerID=MN8TOARS

Phytoremediation of Contaminated Sites to Produce Feedstock for Sustainable Biofuels

Biomass can play a higher role for energy availability and security in the context of decarbonisation; but land scarcity is a critical and limiting factor for the global biofuel production from energy crops. At the same time, soil pollution is widespread all over Europe, where a significant area of land is contaminated and therefore unusable for any purpose. The overall objective of the H2020 Phy2Climate project is to build the bridge between the phytoremediation of contaminated sites with the production of clean drop-in biofuels. Phytoremediation consists of employing plants in soil decontamination and its effectiveness depends on the plants ability to absorb, transfer, stabilize, concentrate and/or degrade contaminants. As the project aims for the production of high-quality drop-in biofuels like marine fuels (ISO 8217), gasoline (EN 228) and diesel (EN 590), a biorefinery concept is employed and the biorefinery processing of biomass harvested from four contaminated pilot sites in different regions of Europe and South-America is based on the Thermo-Catalytic Reforming (TCR®) technology, which combines an intermediate pyrolysis process with a subsequently catalytic reforming of the pyrolysis productsThe produced biofuels will present no Land Use Change risks, thus, the phytoremediation will decontaminate lands from a vast variety of pollutants and make the restored lands available for agriculture, while improving the overall sustainability, legal framework, and economics of the process