In order to establish a bio-based economy in rural areas, the VACO2 project is establishing a pilot plant for the recovery of ammonia using regional CO2 emissions and local aqueous waste streams. This project is being carried out as a transfer project to the ÖkoPro joint project. The process to be developed here serves to support the microalgae production to be developed in ÖkoPro by providing a pH-optimised and NH4 and CO2-enriched aqueous medium.
Biogas plants are an important building block of the energy transition. But they also emit emissions, in particular ammonia (NH₃) and carbon dioxide (CO₂). In the VACO₂ project, research is being conducted into how these emissions can not only be reduced, but at the same time used as a resource, with the help of microalgae.
The idea: Water from biogas plants enriched with CO₂ and ammonia is to serve in the future as an optimized cultivation medium for microalgae. In this way, exhaust gases and residual materials become a valuable nutrient mix that drives algae production.
VACO₂ sees itself as a transfer project to ÖkoPro, in which it was already successfully shown how polluted surface waters can be used for algae cultivation. Now it goes one step further: The combination of ammonium recovery and CO₂ utilization creates a tailor-made water cycle for microalgae, efficient, sustainable and locally implementable.
• Recovery of ammonia from biogas plant streams
• Binding of CO₂ from regional sources
• Preparation of a pH-optimized nutrient medium for microalgae
• Use of algae biomass for feed or bioproducts
• For the environment: Reduction of climate-damaging emissions from agriculture
• For the economy: Upgrading of previously unused residual material flows
• For the region: Strengthening of bio-based value chains in rural areas
The project is being implemented by BES GmbH & Co. KG, a practical operation that already played a central role in algae production at biogas plants in ÖkoPro. With VACO₂, the next step is now being taken to fully exploit the potential of microalgae.
VACO₂ shows how agricultural emissions can not only be reduced, but productively used. Microalgae thus become the link between biogas, climate protection and sustainable circular economy, fully in line with an innovative bioeconomy on marine sites.
