Dutch municipality is looking for bio-based solutions and technologies to make circular products of clean sludge from a local lake.

Summary

A Dutch municipality with a sustainable future vision, is looking for partners that have bio-based solutions and technologies to make circular products from clean sludge. The sludge will be dredged from the local lake. It is preferable that the partner develops or designs these products, that are going to be produced and used locally. Cooperation is envisaged within a technical cooperation agreement. This request refers to a challenge published on an internet-platform.

Description

A Dutch municipality with more than 200.000 inhabitants has a sustainable future vision is a place with plenty of opportunities to make the benefits of the circular economy visible and to achieve impact with residual flows (waste).

One of the opportunities concerns a lake, which over the years has become very shallow. A shallow lake is unfavorable for the survival of different species of animals and plants, thus for the biodiversity. Deepening (dredging) the lake is an option. However, just dredging is expensive and not profitable just for better biodiversity.

That is why the municipality wants to dredge the sludge to make circular products. The sludge is special because it is clean, which is not very common. Therefore, it is suited for making circular products. The possible end products could be for example bricks or an exfoliating cream. Other additional benefits of this deepening are: less growth of water plants, lake can be used to heat / cool of nearby buildings and uplifting bio diversity of the lake. This fits well with the circular idea of the municipality

The lake is located in the middle of the city. The circumference of the lake is 7 km. The lake is still 10 meters deep in the middle, but in general only 4 meters deep. When the pool was excavated in the beginning, it was 40 meters deep in the center.

The municipality is looking for partners such as R&D-institutes, universities and SMEs with bio-based technologies, methods or other ideas in order to make circular products from this clean sludge. Cooperation is envisaged within a technical cooperation agreement.

IMPORTANT: This technical cooperation request refers to an innovation challenge published on the internet platform. If an organization expresses interest before closing date, it will be guided towards this open innovation platform. After registration participants can browse free through other submissions and engage in discussions. All submissions will get feedback by the company on this open platform.

The challenge opens on November 8th and closes on December 13th. 2021 Mind that posts on this platform are not confidential. Beside open discussions on the platform, sharing of confidential information will be made possible on demand. After that, the organization will select from the chat active SME's, the SME's with whom they would like to cooperate in the development of a solution. Once the challenge is closed, Expressions of Interest for this technology request will be treated in the traditional way.

Technical Specification or Expertise Sought

The municipality is looking for bio-based technologies, methods, ideas and partners, who could help them solving this challenge. The following expertise is considered: - application possibilities for sludge; - circular value chains; - circular product design; - bio chemistry; - business case development; - creative thinking.

Stage of development

Concept stage

Contact/ source: Enterprise Europe Network (europa.eu)