An investment idea of the future that could attract foreign capital is undoubtedly the conversion of waste into clean energy.
Four of them started and today they have become seventy, they have created an innovative company in the "green" sector, choosing to remain in Rieti, their city of origin.
This is RESET, a startup founded in 2015 by Emanuele Melchiorri, Stefano Manelfi, Luciano Di Felice and Valerio Manelfi. Four former colleagues with transversal skills (engineering, administration and finance, communication), who have bet on biomass, that is, on the production of energy and heat from organic and agroforestry waste, through a carbon-negative process.
“What normally represents a cost, even in environmental terms – says Valerio Manelfi, 40 years old, marketing manager – can become a resource for generating energy and heat from renewable sources, valorising locally available resources, which would otherwise be destined for disposal”.
But how? RESET has developed and patented an ad hoc technology, it is called SyngaSmart and is based on the gasification of biomass: in simple words it is a sort of hi-tech container, compact and installable in companies, for example agricultural companies, sawmills and in general those consumes energy and produces organic by-products, leading to the now imminent energy communities. Inside this "box" there is everything needed to create renewable energy using the waste that is often produced in neighboring areas: prunings, agroforestry residues, shells, pomace, organic waste, to name just a few.
“Our technology – specifies Manelfi – does not burn biomass, but transforms it into gas with a gasification reactor that reaches a temperature of 900-1000 degrees. At the same time, it is a system capable of sequestering carbon in the by-product of the process, Biochar”. The result is that customers can independently produce bioenergy and heat from renewable sources, reducing or eliminating the withdrawal from the grid or the use of fossil fuels. Furthermore, by reusing your waste you reduce the costs and environmental impact caused by transport and disposal in landfill.
The systems are built in the 7,000 m2 factory in the industrial area of Rieti, where R&D, engineering and design, software development and automation, carpentry, electronics, motor department and assembly activities are concentrated. “It was not an easy choice – confesses Valerio – to remain in our city, an area of industrial crisis where it is very difficult to find specific skills and fundamental workers to form a group of qualified personnel”.
In the space of a few years the entrepreneurial gamble was successful, making a further leap in quality thanks to the incentives of Invitalia, which through Smart&Start Italia supported the project with a subsidized loan of 650,000 euros. “It helped us – says Manelfi – to support the development of the technology over time, so that it can be applied to an increasingly wide range of waste biomass, the management of which today represents a cost for the community and the environment. We want to offer a more sustainable and profitable alternative."
And now for RESET there is the great opportunity of the PNRR, the national post-Covid recovery plan which focuses heavily on the circular economy and green technologies. “In this historical moment – concludes Manelfi – it will be essential to intercept further capital to expand and implement new investments”.
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