Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The purpose of this proposed project is to develop of an economically viable, technologically feasible process to recover valuable materials from organic bio-waste slurries. The peroxide-microwave (PM) process has been developed for the treatment and solubilization of sewage sludge and agricultural organic slurries at University of British Columbia (patent pending, filed for on Aug.11, 2006). The PM process consists of exposing slurries containing various organic solids to microwave (MW) radiation for a short period of time after the addition of hydrogen peroxide to alter the structure of the solid materials, and to release nutrients in the process. During this treatment, the suspended solids content of the biosolids is reduced, and various nutrients are released. The process has been shown to be very effective in reducing solids content and releasing nutrients from slurries of organic solids in the small-scale tests. It is an efficient, flexible and dynamic process for treating various slurries of organic materials that has considerable commercial potential. The specific objectives of this proposal are to: 1) develop and test the PM process in batch and continuous modes of operation, to further explore the effects and impacts of various operating parameters on treatment efficiency, before scale-up experiments can be conducted; and 2) design and build a suitable, larger scale, industrial PM system, based on lab-scale results, to conduct initial scale-up experiments to facilitate the full commercialization of a full-scale PM process.