This paper has shown the potential to implement a biorefinery concept integrated with
material recycling processes. Results for the Bangkok case study have shown the benefits in
terms of achieving self-sufficiency in energy and the creation of value. Furthermore, the
importance of biorefinery in the context of a circular economy emerges as a key functionality
to enable resource looping and increase resource efficiency in urban environments. The
biorefinery approach allows balancing deficits and surpluses of revenues making the whole
plant profitable. Furthermore, without incentives for energy production, the biorefinery offers
advantage over stand-alone processes such as AD with CHP or incineration alone in terms of
profitability promotes resource recovery and looping in the local system. Therefore, an urban
waste biorefinery can potentially increase resource efficiency in urban environments. This
emergent property does prevent destruction of valuable materials, that otherwise go to energy
production, and favours their circularity within the local system. This work presented the
concept for an urban biorefinery and the process technologies considered were limited for
illustration purposes. However, further research to explore alternative scenarios would be
valuable, especially those including other emerging technologies and also with a more
detailed economic evaluation. Furthermore, results might be sensitive to collection,
transportation and storage costs from different points in a city. These aspect need to be
considered for a complete model in future work.