BBTWINS

Digital twins for the optimization of agrifood value chain processes and the supply of quality biomass for bio-processing

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Project details

Type of project: Research & Innovation Action
Project focus: Digital tool
Feedstock origin: Agri-food waste

Project period: 1 June 2021 - 31 May 2025
Status: Completed
CBE JU Contribution: € 4 053 706,00
Call identifier: H2020-BBI-JTI-2020

Summary

The EU is already the largest producer of food and drink in the world. Yet as the demand for food increases – and the need for EU food security grows – the agri-food sector is under increasing pressure. Food production systems need to become more efficient and productive, delivering nutritional, healthy food in greater quantities while at the same time addressing growing public demand to minimise any environmental impacts.

The solution to this challenge will, in part, be found through the deployment of digital solutions. The BBTWINS project developped and validated a digital platform based on so-called ‘digital twin’ technology: a real-time digital replica of a physical process that can be examined, altered and tested without interacting with it in the real world and avoiding negative consequences. Employing two use cases – meat and fruit production – it demonstrated how to integrate, in a single value chain, both the entire agri-food value chain (from crop to final product) and the feedstocks generated at all steps.

BBTWINS combined blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics in this single platform. This platform wis able to predict the optimal pre-treatment and pathway for each feedstock under varying conditions. In so doing, it increases the biomass available, reduces biomass losses and increases biomass storage times without impacting quality.

More information

Digital twin approach: demonstrate the viability and effectiveness of a “digital twin” approach in enhancing the performance of agri-food value chains and maximising the efficiency of the feedstocks produced in the process.
Societal benefits: help meet the growing demand for quality food more efficiently by improving the quantity, quality, availability and sustainability of feedstock for bio-based operations, and improve the ability to model food production and adapt accordingly.
Waste reduction and circularity: reduce existing waste by ensuring that feedstocks from production are used more efficiently, effectively and with less waste, particularly in the EU’s livestock sector, maximising the use of existing resources while ensuring the highest level of circularity.
Greenhouse gas emissions: reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly by optimising transport routes and reducing the amount of biomass transported.
Bio-based industries and digitisation: boost the bio-based industries and the optimisation of agri-food value chains, and accelerate the digitisation of the agri-food sector.

Results

Pain points: identified the pain points of the pork meat and stone fruit industries by working with farmers and food production companies in Spain and Greece, so that solutions addressed real-life challenges.
Digitalisation opportunities: proposed process optimisations and showed end users where digitalisation, sensors, traceability and logistic improvements could be applied.
Digital twin platforms: developed platforms based on digital twin technology, creating real-time digital replicas of physical processes such as the weighing of pigs, which allowed processes to be examined, altered and tested without disrupting existing value chains, with constant end-user feedback to align them with current operational systems.
AI-powered pig weighing: applied artificial intelligence (AI) vision to weigh pigs accurately, which produced homogeneous batches of hams and more consistent final products, and tracked weight over time with automatic recording, with the potential to ease illness detection, growth comparison across locations and understanding of the effect of feed formulas.
Integrated platform and return on investment: embedded sensors, artificial vision and process simulation in a single platform with user interfaces and dashboards designed to give meaningful insights, and showed that producers could obtain a clear return on investment in a very short period.

Impacts

Technology advance: delivered a significant advance in the use of technology in the agriculture sector, helping to pioneer the route for other value chains.
Cross-sector interconnection: established a new cross-sectoral interconnection in the agri-food sector between the modelling and digitisation fields.
New value chain: created a new bio-based value chain by exploring innovative technologies for valorising biomass and animal and plant by-products into new value-added products, with the potential to generate new by-products for a range of industries in ways not previously feasible.
Processing technologies: supported the development and validation of innovative processing technologies for feedstock pre-treatment and storage, including combined microwave and infrared technologies and ultrasound and supercritical fluid technologies.
New products: led to the development of new products, including fertilisers and proteins and fibre for animal and human foods.