Notice

Competition summary: bioprocessing waste into reusable products

Updated 14 October 2019

1. Background

Large volumes of waste fuel, oil, lubricants and some liquid chemicals are generated across the MOD estate and are currently disposed of off-site through external waste management companies, at cost to the tax-payer. The ability for MOD to manage and reduce its own waste burden on-site and to recycle the by-products would not only save money, but would have a beneficial impact on the environment. The aim of the competition is to develop an end to end solution that produces reusable by-products from these waste materials.

This is a challenge across the MOD estate. However, a team at Royal Air Force (RAF) Brize Norton has been developing a capability for this proof of concept stage. This team established a proof of principle for this innovation by undertaking preliminary experimentation on the process of breaking down waste fuel and oils using commercially available microbes. This also demonstrated, at the small scale, that the recycled by-products of carbon dioxide, water and organic matter could be potentially captured with the potential to be reused.

The issue of recycling this sort of waste material is not unique to the military, or limited to the types of waste currently being looked into at this stage of the competition. The MOD is seeking bioprocessing systems, used widely across industry. This competition is focused on traditional fixed systems but also on a portable (transported by aircraft) bioprocessing system that can be used by MOD on world-wide deployments and potentially by aid organisations for disaster relief operations.

The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) wishes to engage with industry and academia to move to the next phase of producing a prototype bio-processing system(s). This includes the ability to break down the waste and to capture these by-products for reuse.

The long-term challenge includes managing this waste for MOD at permanent UK and overseas bases and at temporary bases, in support of operations and exercises which would require the portable technologies discussed above. This phase of the competition will concentrate on developing a prototype system that should demonstrate the ability to be up-scaled to a permanent or portable system.

2. The Competition

This DASA competition aims to aid UK Defence and Security by developing a Bioprocessing Prototype System that can aid the recycling of waste. The intent is to enable MOD to manage its own waste on site and produce recyclable by-products to the benefit of the environment. The competition is envisaged to have multiple phases. This phase, Phase 1, is intended to take forward the established proof of concept through a research and development approach to developing a prototype system. Later phases aim to further develop the system into an on-base demonstrator and later into a portable solution.

2.1 What are we looking for?

DASA is looking for innovations from bidders using existing and new capabilities to address the following challenge areas:

• develop a prototype bio-processing system to break down the waste into its natural by-products.
• develop the most effective microbes, microbe mixes or non-microbial agents, to optimise growth environments to achieve this breakdown for different waste products.
• identify the recycling potential of the by-products to prove that there is a market and use for them.

In order to achieve the end product, bidders may either choose to engage all three areas in an end to end approach or collaborate based on individual specialties.

2.2 What we are not looking for:

• bids which are not undertaking any research or innovation
• bids which will be theoretical or lab based only and not deliver a prototype system by the end of the contract

3. Competition key information

The total funding for Phase 1 of this competition is expected to be in order of approximately £1 million. To maximise innovation we are looking to fund from three to five proposals. We anticipate contracts will be awarded in December 2019 and run for twelve months.

This DASA competition is currently planned to open in August 2019 when the full document will be released on our website. An Industry Day event will be held at RAF Brize Norton on 1 October 2019. To sign up to this event please register on Eventbrite.

Proposals must be submitted to the DASA submission service, for which you will have to register.