Greece - Northern Greece

The Greek agriculture has two main challenges: the very high costs of energy and chemical fertilizers, and pollution of water and soil due to intensive and unreasonable use of chemical fertilizers. Also, soils are subject to a strong mineralization of organic matter and a degradation of their physico-chemical and microbiological properties. The aim of this Living Lab is to optimise the double recovery of the production of biogas and materials to be used as SI from abundant food processing residues.  
Food processing residues:

dairy by-products

expired dairy products

bakery industry products

grape

olive

potato peels

citrus waste

Processes:

4.1.1. The biogas digestate valorisation route (CERTH)  

Key Exploitable Results (KER):

KER1: Selective Electrodialysis of digestates  

Partners:

3 Waste4Soil partners are directly involved in the Greek Living-Lab: CERTH, CLUBE and DIADYMA. CERTH will lead the Greek Living Lab and will be responsible for running the separation technologies and analyses, as well as bringing in food processing industries, biogas plants, and biofertiliser companies to collaborate with the Living Lab, while CLUBE cluster will be responsible for the formulation and distribution of end products to farmers and other members of the cluster. 

Subsequent processing of the digestate will be promoted and several techniques including the electrochemical SED nutrient recovery processing will be further employed into a diverse number of digestates with food processing residues origin used in Northern Greece biogas plants participating in the LL.

CLUBE will work on triple helix aspects of the living lab. DIADYMA will support transportation and handling of food processing residues. Subsequent processing of the digestate will be promoted and several techniques including the electrochemical SED nutrient recovery processing will be further employed into a diverse number of digestates with food processing residues origin used in Northern Greece biogas plants participating in the LL.