Upcycling wastes with biogas production: An exergy and economic analysis

The massive consumption of finite resources creates high economical and environmental costs due to material dispersion and waste generation. In order to overcome this, by-products and wastes may be used, to avoid the use of virgin materials and benefit from the useful inherent energy of the material. By adding value to the material, economic and environmental performance can be improve, which is called upcycling. In this paper, an exergy and economic analysis of a biogas process is examined. In order to investigate if biogas production from wastes can upcycle materials, biogas production from a byproduct from the brewing process is examined. From the analysis, the process is found to upcycle the by-product with an increase in exergy and economic benefit due to the generation of biomethane and biofertilizer. This analysis thus shows that by using by-products as such, the sustainability of the system may improve.