Waste to Wealth
Preserving the goodness of Seaweed. Waste to value – creating a circular economy
Seaweed greatly benefits the ecosystem and deserves to be managed well.
Recycling the waste from seaweed processing can significantly resolve human concerns, climate change, and environmental issues. AquAgri ensures the utilisation of all biomass and water waste to make value-added products. This practice has enabled AquAgri to become a zero-liquid discharge and zero-waste organisation. Our team keeps exploring technologies to use industrial waste efficiently for creating a range of value- added products.
Our steps towards waste management
Creating the first zero-liquid discharge seaweed-based hydrocolloid production facility
During the production of hydrocolloids, huge quantities of water are conventionally used and discharged as waste. However, at AquAgri, the same water is further treated to make value-added products.
As a byproduct of the sugarcane industry, a large amount of press mud is produced. This press mud contains a lot of organic matter and (N). AquAgri is exploring ways to process the press mud to make compost, which can be further used as a raw material to make PROM or phosphate-rich organic manure. This phosphate-rich organic manure improves the physical, chemical, and biological properties of the soil and increases crop production.
Utilising waste from sugar cane industries to recover nutrients and recycle them back into the soil
Utilising molasses-based distilleries' waste to make value-added products for agriculture industries
Sugar factories produce molasses as a by-product. Molasses is further processed to manufacture alcohol by distilleries, and they produce a waste stream called spent wash. Spent wash as part of discharge management in line with PCB norms is then incinerated in boilers. The ash generated is rich in potassium and contains 20–30% of K, which is one of the most important macronutrients for agriculture.
This spent wash ash is used as the raw material to make IFFCO Natural K, the first indigenous potassium product for agriculture. IFFCO Natural-K improves the vigour of the plant to reach optimum growth and hence increases the yield of the crop.
Shrimp processing plants produce huge amounts of shrimp and prawn shell waste which are discarded in the environment without any treatment.
However, these shell wastes can be used as raw material to produce chitin, chitosan, and glucosamine, which are used in agribusiness, pharmaceutical, medical industries, and nutraceutical industries. AquAgri is conducting necessary R&D for utilising this waste stream for value added applications following a bio-refinery approach.
Utilising shrimp processing waste to manufacture chitin, chitosan, and glucosamine
R&D for bio-CBG plant waste stream exploitation
A compressed biogas plant produces a large amount of organic waste after producing biogas. This organic waste is normally used as compost or manure without any value addition. However, AquAgri’s R&D team is exploring ways of utilising these organic wastes to make value-added products for the agriculture industry and to develop complete utilisation of this stream that would be generated at scale, as per the vision of the government of India.