Location: Roorkee(Uttarakhand)
Pilot Leaders: Cambi/IITR
Pilot Status: Anaerobic Digesters operation with CAMBI pretreated sludge under variable HRTs and Organic loadings is ongoing.
Water challenge in this location: The management of waste sludge is becoming challenging in metro cities of India. The situation becomes worsened due to the unavailability of landfill area and reluctant to use by farmers. The cost of sludge management is increasing to 20-30 % of the plant operational cost. Anaerobic treatment of sludge for energy rich biogas recovery is a good option to offset the cost of sludge treatment at some extent. However, there are technical and operational difficulties obstructing the utilization of anaerobic sludge digestion method at wastewater treatment facilities. In order to fully utilize the potential of anaerobic digestion, higher gas yield, one of the most successful pre-treatment system is thermal hydrolysis by CAMBI. By providing Cambi pre-treatment process, more than double digester loading can be achieved with shorter retention time: Reducing digester volume and construction cost, as well as saving space or increasing existing capacity.
Benefits of the technology: Key benefits are Pathogen removal (produce Class A biosolids), high biogas yield, intensification of assets (smaller digesters), better dewatering, odour control and less odour of end- product – possibly combined with post-dewatering stabilization/composting and reduction of sludge volume to be disposed. Use digestate directly without dewatering (advantage is less than half volume of digestate – high concentration of nutrients, sterilized).
Potential for India: The technology has a huge potential for India. Cambi can catalyze all inefficient and junk anaerobic digesters of India. Higher methane and high-quality pathogen free digestate can be focal advantage.
Scope of replication/upscaling across India: As sludge treatment market in India is in nascent stage, Cambi can start THP equipment in India. The potentiality of the knowledge obtained in this research project for the valorization in the Indian industries is high.
Main outcomes: Best optimised HRT conditions for effective enhancement of methane generation via thermal hydrolysis in the context of Indian Sludge.