27th April 2017, The Studio, Leeds

There are now over 660 Anaerobic Digestion (AD) facilities in the UK processing a range of organic materials (such as sewage sludge, food waste, livestock manures and purpose grown crops/crop by-products) into biogas and digestate.  During AD, much of the nitrogen in the feedstock is converted into ammonium, increasing the quantity in the resultant digestate.  There are a number of approaches for the digestate, which include:

1. RECYCLING it to land with the ammonium displacing manufactured fertilisers, however this can attract high storage, transportation and application costs.
2. Dewatering the digestate, treating and REMOVING the ammonium in an activated sludge type process.
3. Stripping the digestate by converting ammonium into ammonia.  There is then the opportunity to RECOVER ammonium in the form of ammonium sulphate (or nitrate).

The right choice will be site specific and depend upon an array of factors including: the ability of the site to treat the ammonia load and meet its discharge consent to watercourse; landbank availability for digestate or dewatered product; markets for the recovered ammonium sulphate (or nitrate) or the cost-benefit of installing a new process.

Due to wider environmental factors, other countries are ahead of the UK in nutrient recovery, meaning established techniques already exist to recover the valuable ammonium, which is often currently lost into planetary cycles.

This event will investigate the options for managing ammonium, and seeks to bring together key stakeholders interested in advancing recovery, recycling and removal techniques.

Call for Papers

We are currently inviting abstracts on this subject. In particular papers are encouraged where operating data on specific technologies can be shared and used to promote discussion and to assist investment decisions.

If you would like to give a talk at the event, please submit the following details to franceswoodhead@aquaenviro.co.uk by Wednesday 18th January 2017.

• Title of your presentation
• A brief abstract, including 3 bullet points summarising the main themes of your talk (these will be used on marketing material)
• Speaker name, job title, organisation and contact details

Exhibition

A limited number of exhibition spaces will be available at the event – please contact franceswoodhead@aquaenviro.co.uk for further details.