Descripción del proyecto
Una alternativa rentable para tratar los lodos de aguas residuales
El tratamiento de las aguas residuales urbanas en toda Europa ha mejorado en los últimos decenios. La mayor parte del flujo de aguas residuales que entra en una planta de tratamiento se vierte y puede volver a utilizarse. Lo que queda es una suspensión diluida de sólidos, recogida por la planta de tratamiento y conocida como «lodos de aguas residuales». La incineración se considera el método de eliminación más seguro de los lodos de aguas residuales, pero es relativamente caro y plantea problemas técnicos difíciles. El equipo del proyecto HTCycle, financiado con fondos europeos, demostrará una alternativa mejor a la incineración. Comercializará una tecnología patentada para la carbonización hidrotérmica que debería aumentar la cantidad de lodos convertidos en productos de alto valor, como combustible, carbones activados para el tratamiento del agua, fósforo y materiales para la recuperación de suelos.
Objetivo
Efficient municipal waste-water treatment, such as the systems currently in place in most European municipalities, produces vast amounts of sewage sludge. The latest data collected show a yearly production of 9.637 thousands of tons in the EU28 countries. Sludge treatment issues are often neglected in comparison with water-related parameters which results in serious technical difficulties and highly expensive disposal methods. As a result, an energy efficient, environmentally sound and economically viable process for sludge disposal and reuse of valuable resources e.g. phosphorus hardly exists.
The most common disposal methods for sludge are spreading on agricultural soil, composting and incineration. Land-filling has been long banned, the use as fertilizer, although very moderate in costs, is being banned in many regions due to concerns about contamination of soils with heavy metals and endocrine disruptive compounds. Composting raises the same concerns, and it is a labour-intensive and unsafe process, which leaves incineration as the most used option, albeit an expensive and not effective one. Incineration entails the highest costs (80-110 € /ton), but is also considered the safest disposal method and is fast growing and widely adopted. It presents also technical difficulties, such as the low overall efficiency of the process, the huge logistic efforts required to transport the sludge to the incineration plants, or the disposal of the ashes after the sludge has been incinerated.
In this situation, our company, AVA has the objective to demonstrate and commercialize our proprietary technology for hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of sewage sludge, showing clearly technical and economic ad-vantages against the current sludge incineration method. We aim to increase the amount of sludge converted into high value products such as fuel, activated carbons for water treatment, recovered phosphorus, soil remediation material, carbon sequestration schemes and other applications. The HTCycle process turns the present sewage sludge disposal (incineration) from a costly process into an income-generating activity.
Ámbito científico
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processesrecycling
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwater treatment processeswastewater treatment processes
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencessoil sciencesedaphology
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuels
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringnatural resources managementwater management
Programa(s)
Convocatoria de propuestas
Consulte otros proyectos de esta convocatoriaConvocatoria de subcontratación
H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-2
Régimen de financiación
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinador
17390 MURCHIN OT RELZOW
Alemania
Organización definida por ella misma como pequeña y mediana empresa (pyme) en el momento de la firma del acuerdo de subvención.