Novel approach to production of high-value biochemicals and simultaneous removal of organic and other contaminants from waste streams using High-Rate Biomass Bioreactors

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Depleted energy resources, increasing worldwide energy demand, and global climate change, mainly caused by anthropogenic activities of fossil fuels can be detrimental to economic development, particularly in areas of high-energy consumption such as North America. For a long time, wastewater has been considered a human health concern and an environmental hazard and therefore, treated to produce an effluent with satisfactory quality for discharge to the environment. A paradigm shift from considering wastewater streams as waste to being treated as a proactive energy and material resource is currently underway to contribute to the development of water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs). The overall objective of the proposed research program is to develop economical, robust, and efficient processes to produce bioenergy and recover chemical resources from wastewater and turn the high strength organic municipal waste streams into WRRFs facilities from which water along with different value-added products can be recovered. The research program will be focusing on the commissioning of the developed technologies and the next group of value-added products with a main focus on the high-risk compound in the wastewater and study of these biotechnologies to remove pollutants that recently discovered their presence in the wastewater. This will be done across four research themes: 1) Explore the modification of conventional activated sludge process and convert it into an A-stage process of high rate activated sludge (A-HRAS), high-rate contact stabilization (HiCS), and Alternating Activated Adsorption (AAA), 2) Develop a sequential biochemical process to recover biomethanol, extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), and Biopolymer (PHB and PHAs) from waste streams, 3) Develop a novel approach to integrate the Modified activated sludge system with the sequential biochemical process, and 4) Develop a high-level model to integrate the new systems within the WRRFs process and real municipal waste streams. For future sustainability, Canada needs to produce more of its energy and chemicals using a process based on renewable materials that utilize the latest advances in technology. Furthermore, Canada needs to train highly qualified researchers/engineers that can develop and operate these processes. For Ontario, creating and using wastewater as recourses and recovery into valuable resources substitute is strongly recommended from environmental and societal perspectives. Hence, an essential part of that future will rely on using innovative biotechnology to produce/recover energy, resources, and value-added products. The novelty of these biotechnologies not only lies in its integration of innovative technologies that are being developed by 100% Canadian researchers and professional engineers, but also every technology presents a novel approach to resolve a practical problem, and advances the state-of-the-art.