29 de Noviembre de 2019.
Tamara Llano Astuy of the GER group of the University of Cantabria, has been awarded with the Short Scientific Term Missions (STSM) of the Cost Action CA17133 about circular cities through nature-based solutions (https://circular-city.eu/). She has made a 3-month internship from 15th July to 12th October at the University of Reykjavik (www.en.ru.is).
The aim of the stay was to simulate the bio-digestion process to get methane and other value-added products at urban-scale from a circular perspective. She has been collaborating with Dr. David C. Finger and with the SORPA landfill (https://www.sorpa.is/en/) to take the data of waste management in Reykjavik capital area. During the internship, Dr. Llano developed several models in Aspen Plus to simulate under different process conditions. Several configurations of anaerobic digestion were simulated under different temperature regimes, testing two kind of reactors, using one or two consecutive reactions steps, operating with different waste fractions (lignocellulosic biomass, food waste, municipal solid waste or co-digestion of two most generated fractions in Reykjavik). Several technical, environmental and economic indicators were compared and analyzed in all simulated scenarios: yield of methane, the amount and composition of the digestate (solid residue), purity of biogas, total released CO2, capital and operating costs.
Thanks to this collaboration, both institutions will maintain a good and prolific relationship for the next years through exchange students, R&D projects in consortium and scientific manuscripts. Other results of this collaboration were the development of a manuscript that will be sent before the end of this year, and the presentation of an oral communication at TERRA en VISION (https://terraenvision.eu/) Congress held in Barcelona (Spain).
