Greene Enterprise has launched an innovative project to renew its pilot plant located in Elche. The facility conducts tests and trials on residues for the company’s upcoming ventures. The project, named Greenergy, builds on the knowledge from the former Nanoplant and involves an investment of over 3 million euros. The new pilot plant will be renamed Superplant, substantially improving many technical aspects to valorize waste and produce new raw materials.
This new pilot plant is more versatile and flexible than its predecessor. It features a new combined process that integrates pyrolysis, gasification, and cracking. This enables the production of a greater amount of value-added products compared with the previous process, and it improves the quality of the new circular raw materials produced by the enhanced method.
The project will optimize and upgrade valorization processes to operate more efficiently. It will improve, for example, waste intake capacity, allowing treatment of larger quantities of heterogeneous waste with better pretreatment. Greene plants valorize all carbon-containing waste destined for disposal in landfills as rejected fractions. This includes materials that have already undergone recycling and reuse, such as biomass, sewage sludge, urban solid waste, and some industrial waste.
So far, the Elche facility has been used to run trials that determine which raw material is most suitable to obtain from the integrated gasification system. Target products include pyrolysis oils, biochar, renewable gases, biofuels, hydrogen, and various chemicals. All of these are reintroduced into the market to create new end products. The new plant will maintain this objective and will also train technical professionals who will work in Greene’s future industrial facilities.
The plant will be located in the same site as the former Nanoplant, in Elche’s Business Park, with operations planned to begin by the end of 2024. The renewal project carries an investment of 3 million euros, of which 2.1 million euros have been subsidized under the Greenergy project by the Spanish Centre for Technological Development and Innovation, CDTI, part of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
The Greene CEO, Juan José Hernández, described the project as a sign of the company’s ongoing commitment to innovation and sustainability in waste treatment. He explained that the renewal will notably improve processes and expand the versatility and flexibility of the technology, reinforcing the company’s role in advancing the circular economy and reducing waste sent to landfills. He also noted that the Superplant will serve not only as a research and development hub but also as a training space for technical professionals who will lead future Greene projects.
Greene began in 2011, born from the initiative of four Elche-based entrepreneurs in the chemistry sector. Today, the company employs more than 80 people. Greene offers mature, efficient technology that addresses the need to manage and eliminate waste materials, avoiding incineration and landfill disposal. Its plants process a range of waste streams, including urban solid waste, industrial waste, biomass, and treatment by-products from wastewater. The processes generate sustainable raw materials such as oils, calcium carbonate-rich feeds, activated carbon, synthetic waxes, and hydrogen through a sustainable, cost-effective thermoconversion approach. This supports the goals of circular economy strategies and the 2030 horizon.