The UVic-UCC BETA Technology Center and the company Mafrica are developing a biorefinery model in a pig slaughterhouse. The research demonstrates the technical feasibility of reducing the industrial plant's water consumption and generating its own energy through the circular bioeconomy.
Source: An industrial doctorate from CT BETA proposes a biorefinery model to optimize the recovery of waste in the meat industry — University of Vic–Central University of Catalonia, June 22, 2026.
The meat industry can reduce water consumption by 25% and cover up to 28% of natural gas demand by processing its own waste. This is the central conclusion of a doctoral thesis recently defended by Miquel Bistué Rovira, an industrial doctor trained in collaboration between the BETA Technology Center of the University of Vic–Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) and Mafrica, a family-owned company in the meat sector. The work, carried out within the framework of the Industrial Doctorate Plan of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the European AccelWater project, offers operational scientific evidence generated over more than two years in real slaughterhouse facilities, and provides a concrete roadmap for the sustainable transformation of a strategic sector under intense environmental and regulatory pressure.
The Industrial Doctorate Plan allows companies with highly complex innovation challenges to address them for three years with the rigor of a specialized academic team and with the company’s own facilities as a laboratory. In this case, Mafrica identified two structural problems in its pig slaughterhouse: the high demand for water and the lack of a commercial outlet for animal by-products. The collaboration with CT BETA resulted in two pilot plants installed directly in its facilities: a membrane bioreactor (MBR) for the treatment and reuse of wastewater, and an anaerobic digester for the energy recovery of by-products.
Two systems to close a cycle
The results of Bistué’s research document the technical feasibility of both systems under real operating conditions. The MBR produces an effluent of sufficient quality to be reused in internal uses that do not involve direct contact with food (refrigeration systems, cleaning of facilities, pens and livestock trucks), with a potential reduction of 25% of water demand. In a context in which the pressure on water resources in Catalonia is increasing, this result has a strategic value that goes beyond the reduction of operating costs.
In parallel, the anaerobic digestion of animal by-products (guts and viscera classified as SANDACH that have no commercial outlet) has demonstrated the capacity to generate biogas that, under optimal conditions, could cover up to 15% of the slaughterhouse’s total energy demand or replace up to 28% of the current consumption of natural gas. The thesis also proposes the integration of the two systems: incorporating wastewater and sewage sludge into the digestion process, and reusing the CO₂ from the biogas in internal operations such as animal stunning. The result is a resource circuit that approaches the circular biorefinery model within the plant itself.
Documented limitations and controlled health risk
The research does not avoid the restrictions that will condition the industrial scale-up. The high concentration of fats and proteins in the by-products can inhibit the biological process if not managed correctly, and the investment associated with biogas plants represents a real obstacle to decentralized implementation. Regarding the emerging contaminants detected in wastewater (veterinary drugs and antibiotic resistance genes), the thesis places them at levels of low environmental risk, although it underlines the need to standardize the evaluation methodologies for reuse scenarios in the food industry.
This combination of positive results and rigorously documented limitations is precisely what gives practical value to the work: it provides an empirical basis to guide investment decisions and industrial policies, not speculative projections.
UVic-UCC has accumulated 97 industrial doctoral projects since the start of the DI Plan, with 17 in the first three resolutions of the 2025 call, and has woven over a decade a network of collaboration with the business fabric of central Catalonia that would not have been possible through the conventional path of specific technology transfer. The case of Mafrica is a direct expression of this: a family business in the meat sector that, through the public-private co-financing articulated by the DI Plan, has been able to validate biorefinery technologies in real industrial conditions for two years and convert its plant into a test bed for an entire sector.
