Food & Beverage Manufacturers (FBM) is one of the UK's fastest-growing sectors in the UK. The industry has been significantly affected by COVID-19\. Due to reduced sales have resulted from the forced closures of the on-trade such as restaurants, cafés and bars.

FBM generate significant volumes of organic waste and wastewater that is rich in organics. There is an opportunity to implement onsite circular waste treatment at FBM. The waste contains valuable chemical energy, water and nutrients that can be recovered with appropriate technologies. Treating waste onsite can reduce carbon emissions, lower operational expenditure (OPEX), create a sustainable supply of bioenergy and reduce water demands. However, current waste to energy solutions such as Anaerobic Digestion (AD) have a large footprint and slow treatment time of 20-30 days.

WASE is developing a novel approach to decentralised wastewater and organic waste treatment. We have developed a patent-pending electro-methanogenic technology to provide a circular approach to waste treatment with our AgriWASE system. AgriWASE allows Food & Beverage manufactures to generate energy-rich biogas (80% methane), recover water and nutrients that can be sold as fertilisers. AgriWASE is a modular, containerised solution that can treat 2 tonnes of organic waste a day.

Our patent-pending technology treats waste up to 10 times faster and generating 40% more energy than AD. The accelerated performance comes from our novel electrode technology that accelerates the breakdown of organics. The biogas from AgriWASE is energy-rich, increasing methane concentrations from 50-60% to 70-80%. AgriWASE has a low ROI (<3 Years) and provides multiple benefits over conventional AD including the reduced footprint and associated civil costs, the increased energy generation and higher waste removal rates.

Through developing a system that can remotely operate and control AgriWASE, WASE and their customers will be able to dramatically reduce site visits, helping the environment thought cut emissions and enabling both parties to more effectively social distance.