Wastewater sludge production is continuously increasing world-wide due to urbanisation and population growth. To solve this problem, incineration is the most preferred solution in many developed countries. Beside its relatively high costs, the main drawback of this method is that the valuable compounds found in the sludge are incinerated and lost. Another widely used solution in large scale is the digestion of sewage sludge for biogas production. These digesters are often not economically sustainable in case of small and medium sized waste water treatment plants. Thus, for most of our clients, small and medium sized wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) in Europe, the treatment of sewage sludge represents one of the biggest problems.
The overall objective of the reNEW project is to commercialize products recovered from sewage sludge through our innovative technology. In our process, the sewage sludge is biologically transformed into a liquid phase which contains volatile fatty acids (VFA) and valuable micro and macro nutrients (NPK), which are recovered. These products represent important market value: VFA as raw material for eco-labelled cleaning agents, and NPK as fertilizer. The aim of this project is the exploitation of the reNEW process, to roll-out the technology all over Europe, enabling the growth of our companies. More specifically, we aim to scale up our process to an industrial level, develop commercialization strategies for both valuable products: eco-friendly cleaner (based on VFA) and fertilisers (NPK). Our target is to create a techno-economic framework in which the return on investment for the reNEW process installation would be less than 3 years.
