Development of a sustainable process for nitrogen recovery from digested wastes

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The company Anaergia (ON, CA) has developed a process that allows to produce a nitrogen-rich mineralfertilizer from organic wastes. However, several bottlenecks currently hinder further widespreadimplementation of the technology. First, the process consumes significant amounts of sulfuric acid, which isnot attractive from an economic, environmental and social (safety) perspective. Second, waste characteristicsare highly variable in time and space. Hence, designing and operating the process to produce a consistentfertilizer and effluent quality at low cost from such dynamic complex waste matrix is challenging. Toovercome these bottlenecks, two work packages will be executed in this project. First, an innovative method tocapture the ammonia in a more sustainable way without the use of sulfuric acid will be developed, therebyexpanding the marketing potential of the company's technology. To this end, sustainable substitutes for the useof sulfuric will be tested at lab-scale. Second, the project will develop a simulation model that will allowoptimal design and control of the process for each specific case without the need for extensive experimentation.The model will also allow to optimize the operational settings of the process at variable feed conditions. Assuch, Anaergia will be able to reduce the investment and operational costs of its technology, increase theoperational performance and flexibility, and hence to become more competitive in the market place. At the endof the project, recommendations for a pilot-scale set-up will be provided to the company, and additionalfunding will be purchased for joint implementation of the pilot. On top of the economic benefits to Anaergia,the availability of a sustainable process for nitrogen recovery from organic wastes will result in significanteconomic, environmental and social benefits to Canada by facilitating the transition to a sustainable bio-basedeconomy.