Exploratory study on the enhancement of conversion of sewage sludge to activated carbon process for wastewater treatment achieving waste-to-resources

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The goal of this proposal is to provide a novel process which converts wastewater treatment sludge into acarbonaceous sorbent, a product which can be enhanced and used to treat secondary effluent, reducingemerging contaminants before they are discharged to the environment. This waste-to-resources process wouldnot only reduce the waste, but also potentially be effective for stormwater treatment and for stabilizingemerging contaminants in sediments/soils. This work will support Metro-Vancouver, a leader in progressivesolutions, in promoting its sustainable region initiative on "Integrated Liquid Waste and ResourceManagement" and "Integrated Solid Waste and Resource Management", as well as waste-to-resources. Theresearch will be carried out by Dr. Li and her Civil Engineering students at UBC. The project will involveseveral components: (1) Exploration of chemical activation methods with different chemicals or biomass basedon secondary sludge. (2) Optimization of operating conditions, such as pyrolysis temperature, heating time,temperature ramping rate, chemical content, catalyst type and dose. (3) Correlations between sorptionefficiency of perfluorinated compounds and physiochemical properties of the sorbents. (4) Preliminarycomparison of the sludge-based activated carbon with commercial activated carbon for the removal of a widerange of contaminants from aqueous environments. It will also provide information on the economic viabilityand sustainability of producing sludge-based activated carbons on an industrial scale compared with alternativesludge reduction technologies.