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Spotlight
PeelPioneers: a Bachelor’s project turned into business SYTZE VAN STEMPVOORT holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Betagamma programme at the UvA, majoring in Chemistry, and is currently enrolled in the Master’s programme Science, Business and Innovation (SBI) at the VU.
On Monday 10 October 2016 I found myself on a stage, handing over a small piece of orange hand soap made from orange peel to Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands. How did that come about? Well, it all started when I did my Bachelor’s project while studying Chemistry at the UvA. At that time I worked on the Orange Peel Exploitation Company (OPEC, wink) research project at the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at York University. The research team was developing a novel process for extracting valuable compounds from citrus peel, based on microwave extraction (thus reducing
the amount of solvents needed). The research aimed to get the extraction process working in sunny places where citrus tends to grow (e.g., Brazil, Florida & South Africa). Upon completion of my Bachelor’s project, I co-authored two academic publications on citrus peel valorisation [1, 2], but still had no clue what I wanted to do after I obtained my Bachelor’s degree. I decided to take a gap year, during which I worked as a consultant and … fell in love with orange peel (again). I was astonished to find out that the Netherlands – definitely not a sunny place - throws away 250 million kg of citrus peel every year! More than half of this is from organisations ( juicing industry, supermarkets and restaurants) and it is currently either incinerated or fermented. Both options are not favourable for further processing because of the high water content, acidity and the presence of
limonene (a terpene that disturbs the fermentation process). At the same time, I knew that citrus peel is a source of essential oils (fragrance), fibre (mostly cellulose) and pectin (natural gelling agent used in the food industry). So it came to be that, in 2016, I started my own company: PeelPioneers – the first biorefinery for citrus peel in a non-citrus producing country. Currently our team numbers six pioneers, and in March and April 2017 we are starting a smallscale pilot plant. We will process ~200 kg of peel per day and focus on extracting the essential oils using a cold, mostly mechanical, extraction process to prevent evaporation of precious volatiles from the oil. From the ‘leftovers’ of our process we’ve made a bar of hand soap and that is the soap that I presented to Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands on an evening dedicated to sustainability in Amsterdam. Ω
↓ Figure Filling the extraction vessel with orange peels
→ References 1. G. Paggiola, S.V. Stempvoort, et al. 686-698 (2016). 2. J. Bustamante, S. van Stempvoort, et al. 598-605 (2016).
Measuring Amsterdam’s pulse modifications to this method to improve its usefulness for urban policymakers and planners striving for sustainable urban resource management. The research was conducted as part of the Urban Pulse research project run under the supervision of the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS). ILSE VOSKAMP is PhD student affiliated to the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions and Wageningen University & Research.
Urban Pulse A sound understanding of a city’s resource flows is essential for sustainable management of these resources. The concept of urban metabolism, a metaphor of a city as a living organism or ecosystem, is used to describe and analyse urban resource flows. One established method for quantitative assessment of urban metabolism is the material flow analysis (MFA) method described by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. Recently, we proposed
The metabolism of Amsterdam We analysed the resource flows of the city of Amsterdam for the year 2012, using the original and the modified Eurostat MFA method. Our results showed that water flows (see Figure) and resource flows that pass through the city without being used there, fossil fuels in particular, dominate Amsterdam’s metabolism. These ‘throughput’ flows are typical for a port city. In addition, our analysis revealed that Amsterdam’s environmental pressure has decreased since 1998 in terms of per-capita waste generation and drinking water consumption. Comparison A comparison between the results
of the two analyses revealed three major benefits of the modified Eurostat MFA method. First, it presents a more complete image of the flows in the urban metabolism due to a focus on resource flows rather than material flows. Second, it presents findings in more detail, which allows for an in-depth understanding of the metabolism and facilitates comparison between cities. Third, differentiating between flows that are associated with the city’s resource consumption and (trade-related) resources that
only pass through the city yields a much-improved insight into the nature of a city’s imports, exports and stock. Ω
→ Reference I.M. Voskamp et al., Journal of Industrial Ecology (2016). DOI: 10.1111/ jiec.12461 ↓ Figure Overview of the water flows (in kt) that are part of Amsterdam’s metabolism.