Our engineering and energy researchers are sharing in £11.5m to turn sewage sludge into sustainable fuels for transport and carbon products for agriculture and industry.
The PyroPlas project was awarded almost £10m funding under the Ofwat Innovation Fund’s Water Breakthrough Challenge 5. The total project cost is £11.5m.
PyroPlas will also convert biosolid waste from UK water company sewage treatment into low carbon fuels and biochar, a fertiliser used in improving soils.
It will also make high value carbon products, used for example in water purification and energy storage. The high temperature process will destroy harmful forever chemicals (PFAS) and microplastics in the biosolid waste greatly improving the environmental benefits of this approach.
PyrolPlas is led by Severn Trent Water. Professor Tony Roskilly, Professor Yaodong Wang, Dr Huashan Bao and their research team from Durham University’s Department of Engineering and Durham Energy Institute are involved in the project.
They have been working with Hybrid Gasification Limited and Dr Abdullah Malik to develop their novel high temperature pyrolysis technology (PyroPlus) for more than five years.
Pyrolysis involves a thermal process, without the presence of oxygen, used to breakdown organic materials to produce a hydrogen rich synthetic gas and biochar, a charcoal like material. The synthetic gas can be turned into liquid fuels and carbon using non-thermal plasma technology.
Recent UK Research and Innovation funding allowed PyroPlus to undergo rigorous testing.
The project was then scaled-up, from a lab-scale system at Durham, to two 50 kilogramme per hour demonstration plants in the UK and Pakistan, capable of temperatures up to 1,100°C.
This research has laid the foundation for the new Severn Trent-led project.
Our researchers will be working with Severn Trent, Jacobs and Hybrid Gasification Limited to integrate highly efficient biosolid drying, pyrolysis and non-thermal plasma technology, as well as carrying out life cycle assessment of the process.
We plan to develop an integrated non-thermal plasma system to convert the synthetic gas from the PyroPlus plant into sustainable fuels and carbon products.
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