MycoFarming’s ultra-sustainable way of removing drug residues from water
What if fungi could clean pharmaceutical residues from hospital wastewater? And in doing so, transform ‘waste’ into valuable raw materials? The future is near! VU start-up MycoFarming is developing innovative biofilters using fungi and they started an exciting collaboration that brings sustainable water purification closer! Discover how it works and what the potential is.
A new collaboration in the field of water purification
‘Using biology’ to remove pollutants from the environment: that’s what VU start-up MycoFarming does. They are working on innovations in which mycelium, the ‘root system’ of mushrooms, is incorporated into biofilters. This mycelium excels in converting substances like nitrogen, phosphorus, and pharmaceutical residues,mainly from water. And that opens up possibilities! MycoFarming has partnered with researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Amsterdam UMC to test their biofilters for purifying hospital wastewater. But how do you get mycelium?
Development of the latest type of biofilter
MycoFarming, as the name suggests, has its own production site in Amsterdam. The mushroom farm is set up to cultivate native species. For the collaboration with VU Amsterdam and Amsterdam UMC, the start-up is working on a so-called Myco-container. The principle is simple: dirty water passes through the filter and clean water flows out. The high-tech VU laboratories of (A-Life, Frederic Béen) will map the functioning of the myco-containers. This can be done at an extremely detailed level and will provide knowledge that benefits the innovation!
Ambition for large-scale circular water purification
The use of mycelium filters for water purification could, in principle, be circular. Mycelium that convert substances into biomass, that is mushrooms, that can be used, for example, as animal feed, soil improvement, bio-based building material, and biogas. The production of the myco-filters themselves has a low CO2 footprint and energy requirement and can be grown, depending on the application, on reststreams from for example wood industries. On a large scale, the innovation can yield major environmental benefits, since current purification technology still often incinerates used filters (also called membranes).
Partners and stakeholders
The collaboration between Mycofarming, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Amsterdam UMC has been made possible by a grant from ChemistryNL.
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