The NUTRICAS tool can be accessed here, and further details on the tool can be read here, and here.

NUTRICAS is a tool aimed at helping support decision making processes by forecasting costs, performance, and end products for specified nutrient recover and re-use technology combinations on digestate. Based on data from the SYSTEMIC European demonstration project, focused on five large-scale biogas plants which use innovative nutrient recovery processing techniques, and specifically the technologies occurring most frequently at these plants, including:

  • Liquid-solid separation techniques
    • Centrifuge (with and without polymer addition)
    • Screw press (with and without polymer addition)
    • Belt press (with polymer addition)
    • Dissolved Air flotation (with polymer addition)
  • Nitrogen (ammonia) stripping-scrubbing
    • With H2SO4
    • With gypsum
  • Evaporation and condensation
    • With prior acidification
    • Without prior acidification
  • Membrane filtration technologies
    • Microfiltration + reverse osmosis
    • Reverse osmosis
  • Phosphorus stripping and precipitation: RePeat
  • Thermal drying
    • fluidized bed dryer.

By specifying different combinations of technologies, users can compare the cost and outputs of different biorefinery systems.