New Formas project in the call From research to implementation for a sustainable society 2021

Cecilia Lalander from the Department of Energy and Technology and Anders Kiessling from the Department of Animal Nutrition and Management are part of a project with partners from all over Sweden who have just been granted SEK 3.8 million from FORMAS for a pilot project in which artificial intelligence (AI) will support the development of a sustainable urban food production system.

Northern Sweden has recently attracted large industries and server halls as well as the next generation fossil-free steel industry (H2GreenSteel), due to its easy access to renewable energy and natural resources, as well as a cool climate. Boden municipality aims to be Europe’s most resource-efficient and carbon-neutral municipality by 2025. In fact, since 2020, Boden has initiated a large-scale symbiosis project called the Boden Energy Symbiosis, part of the Boden Business Park. In fact, since 2020 Boden has initiated a large-scale symbiosis project called the Boden Symbiosis Cluster, part of the Boden Business Park. One of the initiatives aim at creating an urban food competence platform of commercial size to be used as a national asset for implementing and testing innovative solutions for food production systems.

The project AI for improved efficiency and sustainability of closed land-based integrated food production systems – a case study in Boden: iCFPS (intelligent Circular Food Systems) will be part of that initiative. The project aims to delimit and model the various energy flows within a hypothetical aqua-agro food production system, and will consist of a closed system consisting of four trophic layers: insects, algae, fish, and plants. The closed production system that will be the basis for the modeling is assumed to be downstream of the H2GreenSteel industry, server halls and battery centers. From these, low heat water is released, and can, if strategically channeled, constitute a valuable energy source in the proposed food production system. The four trophic layers in this system (insects, algae, fish and plants), can be seen as biological batteries, with different storage capacities, which together buffer the constant fluctuations in the system. The overall goal of this project is to use artificial intelligence (AI) to understand both the energy and nutrient flows in the system, where waste heat and biodegradable waste is reused to create a closed, circular and sustainable food production system.

The project is a collaboration between Boden Municipality, SWECO, H2GreenSteel, Ragn-Sells, Ecoloop, ONar AB, Johannas Stadsodlingar, Agtira and Tebrito, and a consortium of academics from Luleå University of Technology, SLU and Umeå University.

The academic consortium:

  • Luleå University of Technology (LTU) is taking lead in this project and will develop an AI-based model for the proposed food production system. The team comprise: o Prof. Ulrika Rova, Prof. Paul Christakopoulos, Prof Marcus Liwicki, Dr Ali Usman, Michael Nilsson (project manager).
  • Umeå University (UmU), will be responsible for the plant part of the project and be led by: o Associate Professor Olivier Keech.
  • Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) part of the project is to produce data for the modeling concerning the trophic layers, insects (ET) and fish (HUV), and lead the work in the reference group consisting of representatives of Swedish industrial projects (HUV). The team comprise: Prof Anders Kiessling (HUV), Associate Professor Cecilia Lalander ET

For more information, contact:
Cecilia Lalander , cecilia.lalander@slu.se; Anders Kiessling, anders.kiessling@slu.se

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *