The Abrams Clean Tech Report

 

Lux Innovation Grid: Recovering Energy From Wastewater Sludge…

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

Interesting post courtesy of Lux Populi this weekend:

The Lux Innovation Grid: Recovering energy from wastewater sludge: How candidate technologies compare in technical value and maturity (see graphic below).

Sewage sludge from wastewater has long been narrowly viewed as an expensive nuisance, fit only for treatment and disposal. Utilities, however, have increasingly begun to explore technologies designed to help extract energy and other valuable products from wastewater sludge. As these technologies mature, the market opportunity for resource recovery will grow from $25 billion today to $45 billion in 2020, according to a recently released Lux Research report titled “Technologies Turn Waste into Profit ” (client registration required).

To evaluate the technologies competing for a share of the market, the report first separated them into two application segments: energy recovery and nutrient/material recovery. It then scored candidate technologies by their technical merits and maturity.

This week’s Graphic focuses on methods for recovering energy from sludge, mostly in the form of biogas or alternative fuels. The technologies in this category show the most promise, and are on track to capture 64% of the overall market in 2020.

Although recovering energy from sludge is relatively new as a business proposition, the basic technology has long been available in the form of anaerobic digesters. Notably, technologies that help improve production of biogas by enhancing anaerobic digestion offer the strongest value proposition. Hence, many of these technologies – including ultrasonic cavitation, mechanical disintegration and thermal hydrolysis – land in the Current Winners segment.

Deriving alternative fuels from sludge also shows promise, with caveats. Technologies, like gasification, pyrolysis, and supercritical water oxidation help to derive alternative fuels like syngas and biodiesel from sludge. These approaches scored highly on technical value due to their favorable energy balance, relatively low capital costs, and high solids removal. However, they are also equipment-intensive and, with a limited number of installations, they registered low on commercial maturity.

Source: Lux Research report “Technologies Turn Waste into Profit ” (client registration required). To learn more about this graphic and related intelligence from Lux Research, click here or email Carole Jacques.

Comments are closed.

^ back to top

 

Contact Lara Abrams

To contact Lara, please email her at lara@laraabrams.com or call 415 613 1704.

Archives

 

Blogroll

 

Sustainable Green Web Hosting