Cellulose op IWA Resource Recovery Congress

Het is mogelijk van teruggewonnen WC-papier uit afvalwater grondstoffen voor glucose te maken. Er zijn nieuwe technieken beschikbaar om het afvalwater te zuiveren met een zeef voordat het in de zuivering komt. Grote hoeveelheden vaste bestanddelen zoals cellulose zijn zo uit het afvalwater te halen. Dit herwonnen cellulose is toe te passen als grondstof voor glucose productie en kan verschillende toepassingen vinden.

Resource Recovery congress International Water Association

Bob de Boer van het Hoogheemraadschap Hollands Noorderkwartier vertelt meer over deze ontwikkeling tijdens het internationaal toonaangevende IWA-congres in Leeuwarden. Het congres is van 19 tot en met 22 mei aanstaande. Aanmelden kan via de button hieronder.

Wil je nu alvast meer weten, lees dat de samenvatting van zijn presentatie hieronder. 

Transforming harvested sewer cellulose into a glucose solution

One of the purification steps at a wastewater treatment plant is the removal of suspend solids. New technics are available to filter wastewater with a sieve before the influent enters the aeration tank of the WTTP. A big amount of the solids that are extracted this way, consists of toilet paper. This cellulose material can be applied as a resource for glucose production, which can be reused in various ways.

Authors and affiliations

• Ian Jordans, commercial director, Recell®
• Bob de Boer, sustainability advisor, water authority Hoogheemraadschap Hollands Noorderkwartier

For the transition to a circular economy, the Dutch water authorities have the ambition to valorize several residuals from wastewater. Besides harvesting nutrients and producing fresh water itself, they focus on the cellulose part in sewage water. Cellulose fibers can be sieved out of the wastewater and are of surprisingly good quality, however bacterially contaminated of course and mixed with other suspended solids. For now this makes it hard to compete with regular paper waste streams and find a high end application for reuse. 

Another way to valorize the cellulose (C6H10O5) is to biologically convert it into glucose (C6H12O6) by adding enzymes. In this way other contaminations in the sieving material are less of a problem, as the cellulose is transformed into sugar and will dissolve in the water. When the rest of the suspended solids are sieved out, a glucose solution will remain. This glucose can be a building component for the chemical industry, for example to produce bioplastics.

Dutch company Recell® designed a process to stably produce sugars out of sewer cellulose. Their process was successfully tested at WWTP Leek in Groningen and is now ready to scale up to a facility that produces 1.000 ton/year. With this output Recell® must first convince the market that their 'green sugars' are a good alternative for regular glucose solutions from sugarcane or sugar beet. Recell® eventually aims at a plant that produces 50.000 tons annually.

What is the added value of your submission to our program?

Valorizing cellulose recovered from wastewater is not only a contribution to the circular economy, it also reduces CO2 emissions. It's calculated that 1 ton of Recell® sugar applied, prevents 2 ton of CO2 emissions.