Resource Recovery - Not Wastewater Treatment
The basic principles of wastewater treatment have remained unchanged for at least one hundred years. Our sewerage network uses water as a vehicle for transporting solids in soluble or particulate form, from their site of production to a wastewater treatment facility. At the treatment works the process is reversed and the solids removed from the flow stream. The treated effluent is suitable for discharge to watercourse and the solids receive further treatment before final disposal. This system has served us well in protecting health and the aquatic environment, but in today's carbon conscious, water hungry and, energy and resource scarce world, is it now found wanting and each stage of the process have a serious rethink if it is to serve another hundred years.
In principle wastewater contains many valuable resources, namely: water, energy, nitrogen and phosphorus. The Resource Recovery Group is investigating the technical opportunities available for the economic recovery of these materials. Indicative projects include:
- The application of sustainable urban drainage (SUDS) to concentrate the resources in wastewater
- The potential of domestic food waste disposal units for enhancing energy and nutrient recovery
- Dry digestion of screenings for energy recovery
- Co-digestion of domestic sludge with municipal and industrial solid waste streams to enhance methane production
- Two-stage hydrogen and anaerobic digestion for optimum energy recovery
- Nitrogen and phosphorus recovery in the form of struvite
There are five active researchers in this group:
- Nigel Horan - Reader in Public Health Engineering
- Shanmugam Palaniyandi - PhD student
- Zuhaib Siddiqui - PhD student
- Newati Wid - PhD student
- Luz Cadavid Rodriguez -PhD student
Please contact us for more information : contacts