Hydrens and Facsa stand out at the 18th IWA World Conference on Anaerobic Digestion in Istanbul

Hydrens y Facsa They participated in the 18th IWA World Conference on Anaerobic Digestion held in Istanbul. This highly relevant event in the water sector returned to Europe after its previous edition in the USA. Among the numerous participants and distinguished speakers, the Grupo Gimeno R&D team played a prominent role.

Rosario Arnau, Project Manager, presented the BIOFERES project during one of the conference presentations. This project aims to develop a new biorefinery concept, aligning wastewater management with the principles of sustainability and the circular economy. Arnau explained that BIOFERES proposes an innovative process for advanced nutrient recovery and the transformation of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) sludge into high-value-added products.

"To this end, we have a combination of different technologies such as two-phase temperature anaerobic digestion, membrane technologies such as ultrafiltration and membrane contactors, and solid-state fermentation reactors to obtain different streams and products with high value for agriculture: liquid biofertilizers with high nutrient content and solid biostimulants to promote crop growth," Arnau explained.

The BIOFERES project, coordinated by Facsa and with the participation of Biovic and Inderen, has been funded by the Valencian Innovation Agency (AVI) and supported by the Valencian Community Wastewater Treatment Entity (EPSAR). EPSAR provided the facilities of the Alcoy Wastewater Treatment Plant for the project.

“The process designed at BIOFERES combines different technologies that have managed to spark the interest of researchers from different fields and countries,” Arnau added.

In another session, Arnau also presented a proprietary solver developed by HYDRENS and a methodology for its application in advanced simulation using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) of biological processes in anaerobic digestion. This work represents a milestone in the field of modeling, since "the developed methodology allows us to determine which system and at what agitation intensity achieves the highest efficiency in organic matter degradation and volatile fatty acid production."

This tool has been applied at both laboratory and large-scale levels and forms the basis for the development of more complex models in anaerobic digestion. Arnau recalled: "When I started my doctoral thesis, we set ourselves the challenge of implementing the biological model of anaerobic digestion (ADM1) within CFD. We explored different CFD codes until we finally saw that we could implement it in an open-source CFD software."

Hydrens and Facsa's participation in this conference underscores their commitment to innovation and technological advancement in wastewater treatment and management, highlighting their role in developing sustainable and efficient solutions for the sector.