HBI

🏭 #Company;

Keywords: HTC, Process Water, Sewage Sludge, Laboratory, Industrial Plant

🏢 Company Overview

HBI develops innovative technologies to address one of Europe’s most urgent environmental challenges: sustainable sewage sludge management. The company’s patented system is a circular, polygenerative process combining hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) and gasification. HTC treats wet sludge without prior drying, producing a carbon-rich solid (hydrochar) with improved dewaterability and a liquid fraction that can enhance biogas production. Gasification valorizes the hydrochar to generate syngas, providing the plant’s thermal autonomy, while ashes are studied for nutrient recovery (phosphorus, magnesium, potassium) as renewable fertilizers.

⚙️ HBI’s technology is mobile and scalable, allowing deployment directly at small or medium WWTPs, rural areas, or islands, reducing transport and disposal costs and cutting CO₂ emissions. The plant can operate in a plug-and-play mode, integrating with existing infrastructure with minimal operational impact. From a circular economy perspective, HBI recovers valuable resources from a complex waste, producing stable, usable products, and reframes sludge treatment as a resource recovery opportunity rather than an environmental cost.