Introduction

Annual production of different agricultural wastes is more than 100 million tons in the country which the majority of that is burned or remained without any use. For instance, the annual production of rice straw and sugarcane bagasse in the country is about 5 and 2 million tons, respectively. Unfortunately, the majority of these wastes are burned which cause significant environmental and health problems. Significant development in biotechnology have promoted the possibility of production of different value added bioproducts, such as biocompost, humic acids, biofuels and nanomaterials. This opportunity can make wealth and job creation, and also prevent environmental pollution. So, a megaproject has defined in ABRII to develop technologies for production value added bioproducts from cheap and available agro-wastes (Fig. 1). 

Fig. 1. ABRII megaproject on production of bioproducts from wastes

Achievements

• Development of a technology for fast production of enriched biocompost from municipal solid waste using biotech approaches
• Development of a technology for fast production of enriched biocompost from bagasse using biotech approaches

 Ongoing projects:

• Bioprocess engineering for fast production of enriched biocompost from rice straw
• Bioprocess engineering for production liquid fertilizers and humic acid from rice straw and olive wastes
• Bioprocess engineering for production of liquid fertilizers and humic acid from bagasse
• Bioprocess engineering for production of nanosilica and its nanocomposites from rice straw and husks
•  Bioprocess engineering for production of nanocellulose and its nanocomposites from rice straw and husks
• Biogas production from bagasse and rice straw

Economic potentials

If only 20% of rice straw in the country will be used for production of following bioproducts, it will be expected to:

• Produce about 500,000 tons biocompost (about 300 million US dollar)
• Produce electricity by biogas (about 200 million US dollar)
• Produce about 10 000 tons of nanomaterials