Why AquaCritox?
AquaCritox and hydrothermal oxidation technology have been developed to solve the issues the water industry faces when dealing with biosolids (sludge) and drinking water sludges – providing an economical and sustainable solution.
Conventional issues
AquaCritox Solution
Wasted energy
As a waste-to-energy technology, AquaCritox recovers and harnesses the energy present in sludges – even the low-grade energy in processed digestate. Find out how much your waste stream could generate using our energy calculator.
Larger volumes
AquaCritox converts any organics in the waste stream into inert by-products (CO2, nitrogen and clean water) – reducing waste volume by up to 97% and mitigating the economical, socio-political and environmental issues surrounding sludge handling and disposal.
Need more capacity
By reducing the volume of the incoming waste stream, plants deploying AquaCritox can open up some or all of their anaerobic digester capacity to other gate-fee paying materials (such as food waste).
Disposal routes
With AquaCritox, there is the potential for plants to remove or greatly reduce dependence on third-party waste disposal routes, such as land spreading, landfill and incineration – so the route to disposal is fully secure.
Overworked digesters
By processing secondary (waste-activated) sludge before it reaches the digester, AquaCritox converts the solids present into inert by-products and mineralises nitrogen. This reduction in difficult-to-digest solids loading to the digesters not only cuts retention times, but also increases feed concentrations and lessens the ammonia burden – streamlining the treatment process and reducing the overall load on the plant.
Lost resources
AquaCritox allows for the recovery of valuable resources found in sludge, such as phosphorus and CO2 (and, for drinking water sludge applications, used coagulants).