Over the years, we have worked with a number of partners to deliver many projects, from community waste to energy initiatives and mobile liquid effluent technology development to collaborations with several universities. The projects highlighted below represent a snapshot of our work and inform our direction today. If you're interested in exploring partnership opportunities, get in touch.
NOMAD is on a mission to develop a unique mobile solution for the production of high-quality organic fertilisers and soil amenders from digestate - the liquid biofertiliser by-product from anaerobic digestion.
Digestate is an excellent organic biofertiliser that contains most of the contents from the original material digested (feedstock) but there are several pros and cons when it comes to storing and applying it to land.
SOURCE FOODS
Our circular urban agriculture project, based in East London is piloting a replicable, scalable model for social housing estates, schools, university campuses and more across urban, peri-urban and rural neighbourhoods. We aim to reduce food and waste miles, replace non-renewable fertilisers, compost and energy, and support self-sufficient communities empowered with everyday climate action and skills.
Gainsborough Primary School, Hackney Wick has been transformed, with a vibrant, circular learning farm, where food waste from the kitchen is composted. Food is grown for school meals using the compost in raised beds and biofertiliser in hydroponics. We also supply local shops with £5 Pantry bags, salads and herbs.
The site hosts green skills training alongside CSR-friendly site visits and volunteering days, perfect for businesses looking to engage staff in sustainability.
R-Urban Poplar: Circular food-waste-energy pilot
We're installing a community-scale anaerobic digester at R-Urban to turn residents' food waste from the Teviot Estate into biofertiliser, bioenergy and compost. A pilot food waste collection scheme will engage residents and demonstrate a closed-loop cycle, with by-products used to grow food on-site for community workshops, volunteer meals and events so everything is hyper-local! The biogas will be used to power a community sauna.
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ECOSMART
Smart, hybrid solar + AD minigrid pilot project 2020-24
ECOSMART was a clean energy project that brought LEAP together with Nigerian partners; Solar Sister; Meyana Bioenergy, Mitimeth and EIDI and UK partners University of Sheffield, Smart Villages, Connected Energy and Stopford Energy and Environment.
We addressed the lack of affordable, reliable energy and waste management infrastructure in Nigeria and Sub Saharan Africa, combining community-scale anaerobic digestion with solar PV into a hybrid minigrid.
The focus on digesting cassava, yam, and mixed market wastes to produce biogas for cassava processing ensured a high proportion of beneficiaries were women and those on low incomes.
A pilot system at Ibiade was established in 2024, where smallholders could benefit from clean, renewable energy to process their crops.
LEAP is now working with Nigerian partners to bring this low cost solution to market, supporting developing countries to leapfrog centralised waste and energy infrastructure.
ECOSMART's UK-Nigerian collaboration aligned social and gender considerations with economic and environmental benefits to form a blueprint for sustainable community bioresource management.
A year on from the project, we heard the good news that funds had been raised in response to ECOSMART to install a larger solar array to supply electricity to between 8-00-10,000 Ibiade residents - a fantastic outcome for our Nigerian partners!
Developing mobile digestate processing technology
NOMAD developed a unique mobile solution for recovering nutrients, grey water and soil amenders from digestate - the liquid biofertiliser by-product from anaerobic digestion.
Digestate is an excellent organic biofertiliser that contains most of the contents from the original material digested (feedstock) but has several pros and cons.
Digestate has a wider range of macro and micronutrients compared with standard synthetic NPK fertilisers and an much lower carbon footprint but is bulky at 90-95% water, making storage expensive. Its composition varies depending on the feedstock used. On farms with plenty of land, it is invaluable replacement for energy-intensive synthetic fertiliser but is best applied just under the soil surface, making application expensive. For sites that don't have space to use it, it must be transported off site with high costs and environmental impacts. NOMAD´s smart, mobile digestate technology could be key to reducing the overall cost, complexity and footprint of small plants to dramatically improving their economic viability. It could unlock the urban market for micro AD networks. It could also be scaled up to serve large AD plants, helping save significant disposal costs where they're incurred. For the end user, NOMAD reduces the risks and challenges associated with digestate. The technology aims to boost circular bio-economies by expanding enterprise opportunities, improving resource-efficiency and sustainable agricultural practices to create prosperity and employment in rural and urban areas.
LEAP initiated NOMAD, which ran from 2019-23, bringing together 15 partners across the UK, EU and China to demonstrate the technology across four countries, processing different types of digestate. We designed and fabricated the system, with input from Stopford Environment and Energy (UK), CERTH (Greece), IHE Delft (Netherlands) and IUE (China).
