Low Temperature Electro-Methanogensis

Organic wastes, including food and drink residues, contaminated wastewater and agricultural wastes, are unavoidable. However, they are often lost to landfill or in the case of wastewater, require significant, energy-intensive treatment before they are suitable for reuse or discharge to rivers. Furthermore, business costs for energy and waste processing are increasing, e.g., natural gas prices up 360% during 2021, with volatility ongoing into 2022, exacerbated by political/geographical/pandemic issues. Consequently, costs are increasing for businesses which in turn will be passed to consumers.

These organic waste streams contain energy and nutrients that can be harnessed to generate power/heat, clean water and a treated residue suitable for use as fertiliser. WASE Limited have developed a novel, patent-pending electromethanogenic waste treatment system that can be deployed to harness the value within waste. WASE systems treat/digest the waste under anaerobic conditions (no free oxygen), but in contrast to anaerobic digestors, WASE's proposed technology includes a bio-electrochemical electrode array within the reactor resulting in electro-methanogenic waste processing mechanisms to produce bio-methane. Our systems are 2 -- 3X faster solid waste/10X faster wastewater treatment and our biogas streams are 80% biomethane.

Our target users are SME food and drink manufacturers and farms that create significant, streams of wastewater/slurry. WASE biocentres comprising the reactor and supporting pumps, remote control and monitoring systems and combined head and power equipment can be deployed on-site to increase the sustainability/circularity of the business. Using WASE allows the SME to make savings on waste management costs, access carbon neutral, fixed cost power, and minimise their environmental impact overall.

Our project will support the development of low-temperature wastewater-to-energy systems for low strengthen high flow of wastewater streams in the food and drink sector. The project will develop a key operating process that makes it feasible to treat and recover energy from low-strength wastewater.