Circular Economy solutions for agro-industrial residues in Central Europe: identification of relevant value chains and assessment of economic, social and environmental impacts parameters using digital tools

The importance of biorefineries plays a pivotal role when it comes to bio-economy and circular economy. The possibility to recover value from residues and by-products from agri-food companies represents a primary resource for the production of marketable bioproducts, chemicals, animal feed, fertilizers, bioenergy, and biofuels. This topic is one of the pillars of the Interreg Central Europe project "Territorials Biorefineries for Circular Economy - TeBiCE" co-funded by the European Union. An assessment of the bio-economic performances in the agro-industrial sector was carried out by analyzing the value chains for the residues of major importance in the geographical area to which the various partners of the project belong (Italy in the regions of Veneto and Trentino Alto Adige, Slovenia, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and Poland). For all the value chains considered within the project a flow-chart diagram has been produced, the description of the individual steps allows to know additional inputs/outputs and process conditions. The evaluation and comparison of different solutions has been made possible by the development of digital tools that can facilitate the assessment of environmental, economic and social parameters. The use of the Value Chain Generator (VCG) allowed for a potential visualization of adoptable solutions and the selectable processes. However, it does not offer a spectrum of equally important parameters to consider. For this reason, a comparison was made with the various alternatives available on the market regarding different digital tools. For two different networks (bioethanol production from grape pomace and casein production from dairy-milk by-products), a possible solution for the calculation of parameters was demonstrated quantitatively and qualitatively.