SCFI to construct AquaCritox® Plant in Q4 2010
SCFI will move foward with the construction of a 146,000 population equivalent demonstration scale facility in Cork, Ireland, to process 3,900 tonnes of dry solid per annum. The plant will be a merhcant facility and will take sludge from nearby pharmaceutical wastewater treatment plants and municipal WWTP’s.
John O’Regan, SCFI CEO has said ‘This will be a significant milestone in terms of showing that AquaCritox® can provide a complete sludge to energy solution”. While the technology has been used on a variety other waste streams, this will be the first plant of its size running exclusively on wastewater sludge. This project builds on the successful work carried out on our 14,000 PE European Validation Centre (EVC) and was a natural next step for the company’. The project capital cost is E3.75M.
SCFI has received inquries from municipalites in Australia, Korea, Singapore, the UK, Italy and the US. ‘What we are seeing, is a demand in the market to find a cost effective solution to the issue of sludge disposal. The unifying factor among all of the municipalities we speak with, is that they want to achieve resource reovery, energy generation and reduce their reliance and exposure to sludge disposal routes such as landspreading’ says O’Regan. ‘ We believe we have a solution which deals with all of these issues and can ultimately be one-stop shop for sludge manangement eliminating the need for de-watering, anaerobic digestion, drying and disposal’. The outputs from this plant will be pure water, which can be discharged to sewer and an inert ash. As part of this plant, SCFI also plans on carrying out trials to demonstrate phosphorous recovery from the sludge supernatant produced.
The global value of the sludge treatment and disposal market is estimated to be worth $50Bn worldwide. The increasing pressures on land application and landfilling of sludges is opening up a market for alternative technologies.
