posted on 2015-11-24, 09:59authored byOluwasola O.D. Afolabi
The prolonged challenges and dire consequences of poor sanitation, especially in
developing economies, call for the exploration of new sustainable technologies. These
need to be: capable of effectively treating human faecal wastes without any health or
environmental impacts; scalable to address rapid increases in population and
urbanization; capable of meeting environmental regulations and standards for faecal
management; and competitive with existing strategies. Further and importantly, despite
its noxiousness and pathogenic load, the chemical composition of human biowaste
(HBW) indicates that it may be considered to be a potentially valuable, nutrient-rich
renewable resource, rather than a problematic waste product. This doctoral study
therefore investigated microwave hydrothermal carbonization (M-HTC) as a sanitation
technology for processing HBW – to convert it into a safe, pathogen-free material, while
also recovering inherent value and providing an economic base to sustain the
technology. To this end, the products of M-HTC treatment of sewage sludge, human
faecal sludge, synthetic faecal simulant and human faeces were characterized with a
suite of techniques and tests to demonstrate pathogenic deactivation, and the intrinsic
value of the resultant solid char and liquor. [Continues.]
Funding
Loughborough University, Graduate School (RTT Project under Professor M. Sohail). Nigeria, Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF).
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publication date
2015
Notes
A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.