Better solution for wastewater treatment

What is the topic of your Doctoral Thesis?
The topic of my doctoral thesis is wastewater treatment using anaerobic treatment and calcium-silicate based material.

Why did you choose this topic?
I choose this topic because it is very important to optimize and develop new techonologies to treat wastewater. Most of existing solution for wastewater treatment are inefficient or very expensive or very harmfull for the environment.

What are the most important results?
Two main results:

1- Development of a mathematical model able to describe the reaction term in anaerobic treatment

2- Test at bench-scale a system composed of an anaerobic treatment followed by a packed bed reactor filled with Sorbulite and Polonite

Did you come across something unexpected during your thesis research?
During my experiment I evaluated the following parameters: BOD, COD, total phosphorus, total nitrogen, pH, E. Coli, and enterococcus faecalis. I was expected that the proposed system will remove higher (more than 90%) percentage of these parameters. However, percentage of removal of total nitrogen was only 40%, other parameters presents removal higher than 90%. But, the proposed system successfully fulfilled the Swedish regulation for discharge of residential wastewater.

Who will benefit from your results?
Everyone, industries, municipalities etc. The proposed system to treat wastewater can work with any kind of wastewater. The system is cheaper compared with standard system and it can work at low and high temperatures. The developed models are very helpful to optimize existing wastewater treatment plant.

What will you do next?
I will work as research for WSP and adapt the proposed system to treat storm water. I also will be involved in a project to help developing countries.

presented his thesis Closing the Loop by Combining UASB Reactor and Reactive Bed Filter Technologies for Wastewater Treatment: Modelling and Practical Approaches in March 2016.