The IntensiCarb Digester: An Innovative Anaerobic Digestion Technology for Process Intensification and Resource Recovery from Municipal Wastewater Biosolids

IntensiCarb 消化器：一种创新的厌氧消化技术，用于城市废水生物固体的工艺强化和资源回收

• 批准号: 561772-2021
• 负责人: Nakhla, GeorgeGF
• 金额: $ 7.92万
• 依托单位: University of Western Ontario
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Alliance Grants
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=746674
• 关键词: IntensiCarb; Digester; Innovative; Anaerobic; Digestion

The challenges facing the water and wastewater industry include aging infrastructure, land constraints, energy demands, and financial limitations. Furthermore, there is a strong paradigm shift towards resource and energy recovery from wastewater contaminants. The aforementioned challenges could only be overcome by developing intensified treatment processes - processes that achieve the desired treatment objectives in reduced time and/or space and/or with less energy requirement. Wastewater treatment generates biosolids, the processing of which through thickening, stabilization, and dewatering accounts for over 50% of the total treatment costs. One of the most widely used biosolids stabilization is anaerobic digestion, which is operated at 37oC and atmospheric pressure generates methane energy and liquid streams that are rich in volatile fatty acids (that are beneficial for enhanced biological nitrogen and phosphorous removal from municipal wastewaters), and ammonia which can be used for fertilizers. This project aims to develop a disruptive anaerobic digestion technology, the IntensiCarb Digester (ID) that not only integrates the three aforementioned biosolids processes in one but also facilitates separate recovery of bioenergy, VFA, and ammonia. The operational conditions of the ID such as the vacuum pressure, duration, application mode (continuous/intermittent), hydraulic and solids retention times (HRT, SRT) will be optimized for resource recovery from various wastewater biosolids i.e. primary and thickened waste activated sludge. The study will also develop both a biological process model for the ID and a hydrodynamic model to enable scale-up of the optimized technology and minimize its energy consumption. The conceptual process design for a full-scale system at the municipal partner facilities will be completed and a comprehensive economic study will be conducted. The economic study will benchmark the ID against commercial current state-of-the-art technologies, identify market niches with respect to both new greenfield applications and retrofits, and potential end users for full-scale implementation.

水和污水处理行业面临的挑战包括老化的基础设施、土地限制、能源需求和财政限制。此外，从废水污染物中回收资源和能源的模式发生了强烈的转变。上述挑战只能通过开发强化处理工艺来克服-在更短的时间和/或空间和/或更少的能源需求中实现所需处理目标的工艺。废水处理产生生物固体，其浓缩、稳定化和脱水处理费用占总处理费用的50%以上。最广泛使用的生物固体稳定化之一是厌氧消化，它在37℃和大气压下运行，产生甲烷能量和富含挥发性脂肪酸的液体流（有利于从城市废水中加强生物氮和磷的去除），以及可用于肥料的氨。该项目旨在开发一种破坏性的厌氧消化技术，即IntensiCarb沼气池（ID），它不仅将上述三种生物固体过程整合在一起，而且还有助于生物能源、VFA和氨的分离回收。将优化ID的操作条件，如真空压力、持续时间、应用模式（连续/间歇）、水力和固体保留时间（HRT， SRT），以便从各种废水生物固体（即初级和浓缩废物活性污泥）中回收资源。该研究还将开发ID的生物过程模型和流体动力学模型，以扩大优化技术的规模，并将其能耗降至最低。将完成市政伙伴设施全面系统的概念过程设计，并将进行全面的经济研究。经济研究将对当前最先进的商业技术进行基准测试，确定新的绿地应用和改造的市场利基，以及全面实施的潜在最终用户。