With waste water on the way to a circular economy

There is currently a shift in (waste)water land from major energy consumers to energy and raw material recovery from the “free” source of wastewater. Jong KNCV is organizing a seminar on this subject on Wednesday, October 3 “The toilet flush: the next big opportunity in resource mining”. Jules Rombouts and Jure Zlopaša from the TU Delft Environmental Biotechnology group discuss the recovery of biopolymers from waste streams. Kees Roest from KWR Watercycle Research Institute speaks about innovative applied research and Sigrid Scherrenberg from Evides discusses the value of wastewater.

Due to global warming, water shortages and excessive waste production, there is a growing need for new technologies to treat waste streams and valorize them into new bio-based products. Jules Rombouts and Jure Zlopaša from the TU Delft Environmental Biotechnology group will discuss the conversion of carbohydrate-rich waste streams into volatile fatty acids (VFAs) or lactic acid during their lecture. They provide examples of the use of the recovered biopolymers for the environmentally friendly and convenient preparation of biopolymer (nano)composites and their applications.

KWR Watercycle Research Institute investigates how technology, society and government can tackle the challenges of resource reuse. Sustainable and cost-effective use of residual flows and an integrated approach are central. Kees Rust from KWR presents the latest results of projects with innovative options for water reuse, energy and nutrient recovery from (waste) water with application potential in municipal and industrial water treatment.

Wastewater is a valuable resource. It contains several scarce resources, such as phosphorus, but also nitrogen, energy (biogas) and water. Evides has started research and pilot studies and is now at the level of scaling up the applications to their complete processes. Sigrid Scherrenberg discusses the approach to recover the valuable resources and apply them in their own process. In this approach, Evides works together with their customers and jointly develop sustainable business cases.

The complete program of the seminar can be found on the website. You can for free to enrol to be present.