SUGIMAT and CEDER-CIEMAT share the award for best innovative practice with biomass 2022

5 April 2022

SUGIMAT's Horizon+ self-cleaning rotary boiler and CEDER-CIEMAT's demonstration pilot plant at the San Javier WWTP in Murcia for sludge recovery with solar drying and gasification have been chosen as best innovative practices with biomass in 2022.

These two innovative practices stood out among the 25 applications received by the organisation by 18 February. The result of the public vote, which gathered more than 1,600 votes, and the jury's evaluation resulted in a parity of the two candidates with highest mark.

What are these two innovative practices?

SUGIMAT's Horizon + rotary and self-cleaning biomass boiler allows the recovery of fuels with very high percentages of inorganic exogenous materials, without requiring stoppages for cleaning, and maintaining constant performance. The key is the rotary operation that causes the ash to slide between the boiler's flue gas passages until it is evacuated, supported by an aggregate injection system to release the adhered deposits.

The pilot plant for the valorisation of sewage sludge at the Waste Water treatment plant of San Javier, Murcia, developed by CEDER-CIEMAT, manages to reduce the environmental impact associated with the conventional treatment and management of sludge and at the same time generate renewable energy and a highly stable agricultural amendment, combining four technologies: solar dryer, gasifier, gas burner and Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC).

3 honour mentions

In addition, the jury decided to give special honour mentions to the practices ranked 3 to 5, following the evaluation of the public and jury votes. These practices, highly recognised in both the public vote and the jury's evaluation process, include:

• a mechanised harvesting system with brushcutter-gatherer to initiate "Bush biomass value chains" presented by CEDER-CIEMAT;
• the pilots of "Artificial intelligence with distributed sensorisation applied to biomass" in the air conditioning of buildings and heat networks, presented by REDYTEL IoT S.L.;
• and the automated system for "On-line forest biomass estimation and recommended harvesting" based on LiDAR data management and processing, terrain data, satellite data and silvicultural criteria of Agresta S. Coop.

How did the contest evolve?

The 2022 competition sought to identify innovative technologies, processes or business models, which go a step beyond the usual practices, and provide advantages in their implementation: providing new solutions, or improving the performance or applicability of the same. In short, innovative practices, little known, but already available to be used and put into practice.

To this end, the INtercamBIOM Network organised a call for applications between 19th January and 18th February 2022. After the closing of the application period, up to 25 applications were collected.

The INtercamBIOM network (managed by AVEBIOM and the CIRCE technology centre), and organiser of the award, published the nominations and organised an open and popular public vote between 22nd February and 18th March. During this four-week period, up to 1,647 votes were collected, which contributed 50% of the final score, as established in the competition rules.

From 18th March, a jury composed of 5 persons with different profiles, and with an outstanding professional career in the field of biomass, evaluated each practice taking into account the value of each application, according to the criteria of feasibility, innovation, social and environmental impacts, and replicability. It sought to select promising, innovative, replicable and already available practices that could enable the use of biomasses to be scaled up. The jury was made up of the network organisers (AVEBIOM and the CIRCE Technology Centre), two network advisors (ASEMFO-National Association of Forestry Companies, and CTA-Technological Corporation of Andalusia), and the University of Zaragoza, invited to provide a vision from the R&D point of view.

The evaluation resulted in a parity of the two candidates with hghest mark, presented by SUGIMAT and CEDER-CIEMAT respectively, and the Jury decided to resolve it as a technical parity, considering both as winners of the first prize for innovative practice with biomass in 2022.

After the award: further dissemination, workshops and new award in 2023

INtercamBIOM, in its aim to promote the dissemination and transfer of innovative practices with biomass, will invite the winning practices to participate in future workshops and events. It will also encourage other practices of interest, especially those that have received an honourable mention, to continue to be made visible.

In fact, in the short term, several of the documented practices, some of them participating in the award, will be presented at the workshops organised by INtercamBIOm on 26 and 27 April 2022 (see more info), within the framework of the FIMA (International Agricultural Machinery Fair of Zaragoza).

With the new entry of 2023, INtercamBIOM will once again organise the second edition of the award for the best innovative practice with biomass.

 

MORE INFORMATION

Original news (in Spanish): LINK