The Combined Nutrient and Fuel Process

Every single day,1000 tons of municipal solid waste end up uncollected in the streets of Mombasa which is my hometown and Kenya's second biggest city. On average Kenya's top 5 cities produce over 2000 tons/day of solid waste per city with only 40% of it collected. Like in many developing nations, 60% of this waste ends up in flash dumpsites next to residential areas causing environmental pollution like odours, eutrophication and release of GHGs while also increasing the risk of transmission of waterborne diseases and thus adversely impacting the adjacent communities like my own. 

Residents in informal settlements are disproportionally affected by the accumulation of municipal solid waste in flash dumpsites within urban and suburban residential areas. A study in 2013 by the Mombasa County government in collaboration with Pamoja Trust showed about 65% of Mombasa population lived in informal settlements. Today, that translates to about 800,000 people in Mombasa who are at risk from uncollected municipal solid waste. Globally, the figure blows up to about 1 billion people with about 80% of them located in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Government waste management programs in such informal settlements are often severely under-funded and not adequately equipped with waste collection resources and personnel. Even in major cities, disposal bins are not sufficient, with existing ones often end up overflowing without timely collection. There aren't enough garbage collection trucks. Within the communities, there is a lack of awareness of proper waste management and handling including a lack of understanding or awareness of the need for waste segregation. In addition, local trash collectors have economic outlets for popular recyclables like metals, glass and plastic waste but do not have the same incentive to bother with organic waste. 

In terms of the release of GHGs, unrecycled organic trash in landfills and informal dumpsites contribute between 5%- 13% of the world's human-related methane emissions, second only to the Energy and Agriculture sectors. About 2 billion metric tonnes of municipal solid waste per year is generated at the global level. The UK's Department for Environment (DEFRA) estimates that organic trash in landfills generates about 0.65 tonnes of CO2-e for every tonne of waste disposed. This means that every new year the organic fraction of unrecycled MSW contributes an additional 1 billion metric tonnes of CO2-e GHGs to the atmosphere. 

The amount of MSW generated globally is expected to double by 2050. On the other hand, the world recycles less than 20% of it. The lack of sufficient recycling capacity and efficient large-scale recycling processes for organic waste contributes the greatest to the accumulation of municipal organic waste. Without an efficient and sustainable economic outlet for this waste, appropriate and adequate resources cannot be deployed towards managing it through proven methods like incentivised collection and community-based training on waste handling and segregation. Hence most communities depend on government waste management systems that are severely overwhelmed by the rising population density in urban, suburban and periurban areas. 

Our solution, The Combined Nutrient and Fuel (CNF) process, is the intersection between sustainable solid waste management, improved food security and a net zero circular economy. This proprietary technology is an industrial template for the conversion of the organic fraction of Municipal Solid Waste into 3 essential products: a liquid bio-fertilizer concentrate, an organic soil conditioner and renewable electricity. The CNF solution innovatively combines known technologies like anaerobic digestion, biomass W2E and proprietary process engineering in a unique method that cost-effectively produces high-quality regenerative organic plant and soil nutrients through a self-sustaining net energy-positive industrial process that is scalable, environmentally sustainable and has highly lucrative unit economics. 

Through the CNF process, we effectively turn organic waste into a profitable raw material whose demand creates an economic incentive for the collection of solid trash from the streets, innovating a new value chain around the collection, sorting and supply of organic municipal solid waste. In turn, incentivised trash collection creates employment opportunities within the communities and thus provides gainful income for local trash collectors who are often fronted by the local youth.  Leveraging the  CNF process' high cost-effectiveness, InspCorp's goal is to avail the high-quality liquid bio-fertilizer concentrate and the organic soil conditioner products to small-scale farmers at 65% their market value, enabling the smallholders in developing economies to affordably leverage the power of regenerative farming towards better yields, increased profit margins and sustainable farming. 

In terms of impact metrics, for every 1 tonne of organic waste processed and kept off the streets, InspCorp's proprietary CNF solution will support 750 smallholders with access to hyper-affordable regenerative fertilizers, generate about 760 kwh/day of cheap and clean renewable electricity for the productive use of energy and curb about 60 Tonnes/year CO2-e while creating 15 employment opportunities for locals.

InspCorp is currently constructing a 20 cubic CNF pilot plant on the coast of Kenya, in Likoni suburb of Mombasa county. Likoni is the second biggest subcounty in Mombasa with a population of around 250,000 people. The population of Likoni is generally described as low-income and lower-middle class with about 95% of the residents living in either active or regularised informal settlements.  The municipal solid waste management infrastructure is virtually non-existent in most of Likoni, making the sub-country to be characterised by the pervasiveness of illegal flash dumpsites along the streets or right next to its characteristic communal houses. The high population density of Likoni (6,182 people/km²) aggravates the solid management crisis to the point that the town is often described as drowning in trash. 

Upon commissioning, InspCorp's pilot facility will recycle 7 Tonnes/month of locally generated organic waste to become the biggest organic waste recycling initiative in Mombasa while keeping more than 70 tonnes per year of trash away from the streets of Likoni. In turn, the commissioned pilot plant will yield more than 3 tonnes/month of regenerative fertilisers and about 150 kwh/day of affordable electricity for productive use. The produced liquid biofertilizer and organic solid conditioner products will be enough to benefit about 180 local smallholder farmers in Mombasa county with the projected 65% market price competitive pricing. InspCorp also intends to leverage the renewable energy generated from the CNF pilot plant to power a 50 m3 communal cold storage facility in Likoni which will be the biggest and the first initiative of its kind in Mombasa. Ploughing back the 150 units/day of clean energy generated through the CNF pilot plant into the cold storage facility, InspCorp will look to rent out palette spaces at hyper-affordable prices to local fishermen/fish vendors and smallholder poultry farmers looking to preserve their produce. In addition, by keeping more than 70 Tonnes per year of organic waste off the streets of Likoni and away from landfills, the pilot plant will curb around 142 Tonnes/yr eq CO2 GHG emissions representing the single largest carbon reduction initiative in the geography. 
Finally, while demonstrating the feasibility of the CNF recycling process in addressing Likoni's trash crisis, the pilot plant will also provide about 10 direct employment opportunities for Likoni's residents. 

The founding team comprises of InspCorp's Think-tank which is at the heart of the company's inspired innovations. All the members of this Thinktank team were born and raised in the suburbs of Mombasa in Kenya, experiencing the invasion of tonnes of trash and flash dumpsites close to their homes. Overcoming these experiences, they grew up into engineers and environmental scientists with a common desire to change the lives of their local communities. It is this collective vision that birthed InspCorp's innovative thinktank.  As a result, the founding team not only intimately understands the problem at hand but also leverages shared experiences both growing up and starting the implementing company. 

Working on the Combined Nutrient and Fuel (CNF) project, are three members of the InspCorp Thinktank. The Project Lead currently lives in Likoni, Mombasa. Project CNF was thus designed out of the project lead's experience of the deteriorating solid waste management infrastructure in Likoni and discussions with the tenacious local trash collectors network that currently struggles to cope with the crisis. The team lead constantly interacts with Likoni's community to understand the dynamics of waste generation from the source and to understand what model would not only work to solve the crisis but also incentivise people and create income for the local community. 

The Combined Nutrient and Fuel process is a template for a novel indsutrial scale process. We have built a custom process simulator to analyse the dynamics of the innovation on an industrial scale, to determine the unit economics and the framework for pilot testing. We are prototyping the process with a bench-scale set-up that produces intermediary products for testing. Internal testing on the intermediary shows consistency with predicted performance. We are currently on progress to generate final stage MVP products for usability testing. Hence we currently have zero users of our products. However, one of our chief goals with the project is to incentivise trash collection by purchasing organic waste from local trash collectors. Raw material aquisition is one the most integral aspects of our business model. In the prototype stage, we tested this by partnering with local trash collectors to source material for the bench-scale prototype. Hence, a local trash collector who is our organic waste supplier is currently our only direct beneficiary of the project.  

Through MIT's Solve program, I look forward to building a robust Monitoring and Evaluation framework that will not only be applicable in my current solution but also throughout InspCorp's social enterprise projects portfolio. Particularly for the CNF project, access to MIT's rigorous evaluation will not only help us improve the project but also provide market credibility for our new product brand. 

I believe that Solve also provides the doorway to working with MIT, one of the world's most reputable technology institutions. I look forward to leveraging Solve's technical networks to improve CNF technology, particularly in the biotech and separation unit processes employed in the industrial process. 

More so, we desire to leverage Solve's networks to gain access to the US market for our regenerative fertilizer products. Upon scale, the CNF project will yield more product quantity that can be currently absorbed in the African market. Our mid-term goal is to expand our product into the Americas through the US market. I believe that Solve's networks and partners will be integral in opening the doorway to the US market when the project is in the growth stage, not only by providing market insight and access but also by guiding InspCorp through the legal and regulatory barriers. 

Finally, since we are currently raising funds through our prototyping/piloting phase, Solve's $10,000 grant will be an important addition towards financing the MVP's usability testing and quality accreditation processes. Further, Solve's access to investor networks and pitching opportunities will also be integral in our next seed and series financing rounds. 

Our solution innovatively combines proven processes like anaerobic digestion, biomass W2E and proprietary process engineering in a unique method that cost-effectively produces quality organic plant nutrients in a self-sustaining net energy-positive industrial process that is scalable, environmentally sustainable and has profitable unit economics. We are currently in the process of filing several patent applications to protect the whole CNF process in addition to several novel unit methods. At the heart of the proprietary CNF process is an innovative product engineering of the biological digestates of an organic feedstock through an energy-efficient combination of natural physical and biological unit processes, resulting in products that are 100% Organic and additives-free. By utilizing organic waste as its primary raw material, the CNF business model is able to offer affordability to farmers and at the same time address the environmental concerns associated with inorganic fertilizers.
Through our solution, the CNF technology, the abundance of organic waste in developing countries creates an opportunity to harness the nutrient resources within it for the benefit of their smallholder farmers who are currently riddled with high fertilizer costs and rapidly deteriorating soil quality as a result of overuse of inorganic fertilisers. The CNF technology does not only tackle the crisis-level problem of solid waste management but at the same time contributes to bolstering food security by addressing the concerns faced by smallholder farmers through recycled nutrients and regenerative fertilizers. 
Therefore, the innovative CNF business model not only provides gainful income for local trash collectors but at the same time supports smallholder farmers with renewable energy for productive and regenerative fertilizers at 65% market price to promote their livelihoods and increase food security.

Our solution innovatively combines proven processes like anaerobic digestion, biomass W2E and proprietary process engineering in a unique method that cost-effectively produces quality organic plant nutrients in a self-sustaining net energy-positive industrial process that is scalable, environmentally sustainable and has profitable unit economics. We are currently in the process of filing several patent applications to protect the whole CNF process in addition to several novel unit methods. At the heart of the proprietary CNF process is an innovative product engineering of the biological digestates of an organic feedstock through an energy-efficient combination of natural physical and biological unit processes, resulting in products that are 100% Organic and additives-free.

3 full-time staff

5 part-time staff

3 contracted workers. 

1 year. 

The CNF process turns waste into liquid biofertilizer, soil conditioner and electric power. From these products, our business model has two target customers. The first, accounting for 95% of CNF's projected revenue, are smallholder farmers with farm sizes of up to 1 Ha. To these farmers, we will sell our two fertilizer products competitively at 65% market prices. 

Our main target customer is the smallholder farmer with a typical farm size of 0.5 - 1 Ha. These will constitute 95% of CNF's anticipated revenue. Smallholder farming comprises 80% of Kenya's agricultural output, involving approximately 7.5 million farmers. Our serviceable obtainable market is $13.3 million, reflecting organic fertilizer demand from smallholder farmers accessible through the Kenya Organic Agricultural Network. Our addressable market size is $1.9 billion, representing the liquid fertilizer market share in the Middle East and Africa. The total market size, encompassing the global foliar fertilizer market, currently stands at $23.1 billion, projected to reach $29 billion by 2028.

About 50% of smallholder farmers in Kenya use fertilizers which are either farm-generated fertilizers like manure or purchase NPK-based fertilizers through Agro-dealers. The top players in Kenya's fertilizer market include Yara, MEA, ARM among others with the strongest competitive products being traditional NPKs. In contrast to competitors like Yara and ARM offering either modified or traditional NPKs, CNF's biofertilizer provides regenerative organic quality at equivalent nutrient concentrations, surpassing farm-generated options in quality, and significantly undercutting big-brand NPKs in price. This balance positions CNF's fertilizers as superior in quality and affordability for smallholder farmers, beating both commercial and farm-generated alternatives.

Thus, the CNF business model has one main revenue stream; product sales. The CNF process' proprietary cost-effectiveness & use of waste as raw material results in a projected profit margin of more than 50%, accounting for the model's high profitability.

The Combined Nutrient and Fuel (CNF) process uses proprietary technology designed to be as cost effective as it is efficient. Utilising waste as the chief raw material in the CNF process together with the cost effective design generates excellent unit economics that allows for a high profit margin even at the intended discounted product pricing The projected ROI for the CNF process is greater than 40% meaning that once the pilot is established via the grant it will be commercially sustainable through the revenue generated through product sales. Additional impact investment will be needed to scale up CNF operations. Engaging smallholder farmer networks at each phase of scale is important to ensure that the market share scales with the increased production, maintaining CNF's profitability

The CNF process transforms organic waste into a liquid biofertilizer, a soil conditioner and renewable electricity, creating two potential revenue streams from these three products. The first, implementable immediately, involves product sales; we'll market the biofertilizer and soil conditioner products to smallholder farmers, and sell the generated renewable electricity to local micro-enterprises with power demands of >5 units/day. The second revenue stream, achievable in the mid-term, will involve renting out cold storage time, powered by CNF's affordable renewable electricity, to local fishermen and poultry farmers. This will support the Productive Use of Energy through affordable and sustainable power generation.