Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

Reducing carbon footprints of wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) has become one of the main drivers for the innovation of wastewater treatment technology due to the growing concern on climate change. The anaerobic digestion (AD) process plays an important role in energy recovery and waste sludge stabilisation. Built upon our present research findings, this program aims to develop an advanced sludge anaerobic digestion technology that is characterised by a two-stage AD coupled with an intermediate thermal hydrolysis (TH) treatment, named as an AD-iTH process. The novelty of the AD-iTH technology can be ascribed to the intermediate TH process that is designed to treat the non-readily biodegradable sludge (nrbSludge). As demonstrated by our preliminary study, the AD-iTH is of potential to greatly enhance the VSS destruction, biogas production, and pathogen reduction. This program will focus on the TH treatment of nrbSludge, the AD-iTH process optimisation, the mechanisms of AD-iTH process, and the heavy metal bioavailability and fate mechanism in the AD-iTH system. The development and applications of the AD-iTH will bring significant economic and environmental benefits to the Canadian WWTPs through reducing waste sludge production, improving energy recovery, and reducing the solid management cost. In addition, this research program will provide excellent HQP training opportunities and generate frontier knowledge on the advanced AD technology. Therefore, the outcomes of this program will exert significant impact on the AD technology advancement and the practical applications of AD for energy recovery and emission reduction.