Advanced Water Management Centre
Innovative Water Research
Innovative Water Research The Advanced Water Management Centre (AWMC) is an international centre of excellence in innovative water technology and management. The AWMC’s particular strength is the close integration of biological science, process engineering and informatics. This unique combination forms the basis for ground-breaking research but also offers some exciting opportunities for development and application of user-specific solutions to challenging environmental problems. The AWMC has an outstanding track record of successful research, development and application projects currently worth almost AU$10 million per annum, many in close collaboration with industry and research collaborators.
Professor Zhiguo Yuan Director z.yuan@awmc.uq.edu.au Professor Yuan, IWA and ATSE Fellow, joined the Advanced Water Management Centre at The University of Queensland in 1998. He served as the AWMC Deputy Director from 2001 to 2014, and is currently the Director. He has won over $35M in competitive research funding since 2001 including 20 ARC Discovery and Linkage grants as a Chief Investigator. Professor Yuan is also a recipient of the prestigious Clunies Ross Award and named in the Top 100 Most Influential Engineers in Australia in 2015.
The combined efforts of our programs are achieving sustainable outcomes for the water industry, including protecting our water resources and critical infrastructure.
Biotechnology Environmental biotechnology is a strength at AWMC and has already had a long and successful history in wastewater treatment. Common technologies utilise microorganisms to remove pollution from waste streams and create value-adding products. AWMC researchers are advancing environmental biotechnology through the development of more efficient operating strategies, and are able to utilise existing infrastructure and alternative processes including high rate activated sludge, mainline anammox, anaerobic membrane bioreactors, and photobioreactors.
Waste to Protein Single Cell Protein (SCP) technologies represent a range of novel process options for treatment of waste streams while conserving carbon and nutrients in an upvalued product. These technologies produce edible unicellular microorganisms such as algae, yeasts, bacteria or fungi. The microorganisms can contain up to 70% crude protein and represent a protein source with multiple potential uses, including fertilizers, animal feeds, food supplements, and a source of raw protein – depending on the production process. When considering the direct value proposition for agricultural industries, such as the Australian red meat industry, the value of SCP produced from wastes could be 3-5 times higher than the energy mineral/nutrient value of the waste. This project is exploring a range of novel technologies such as phototrophic bacteria for simultaneous organics, nitrogen and phosphorous capture. The research has established proof-of-concept and is progressing technology development towards continuous laboratory scale operation and future application at demonstration scale.
Sewer Corrosion and Odour It is now widely recognized that the escalation in extreme nuisance odours and the premature failure of sewerage infrastructure is resulting in substantial capital expenditures for public utilities. The Sewer Research Group delivers high quality solutions to sewer related research problems. More than 15 years of experience in sewer corrosion and odour research has led to 6 awards, nearly 100 peerreviewed publications, 2 patents and $400 million documented cost savings to the Australian Water Industry. With reactors that mimic sewer processes, specialised equipment and in-house-built software, topics like integrated and decentralised water management and the fate of micro pollutants in urban water systems can be addressed.
Corrosion Proof Concrete Sewers Concrete sewer corrosion is a long-standing problem which costs tens of millions of dollars to the Queensland water industry every year. The Qld weather environment (hot with increasing temperatures due to tropical weather and climate change) increases the sewer corrosion rate, which is primarily caused by microbial sulfide oxidation on the concrete surface. Extreme weather events like floods and droughts aggravate the corrosion through different mechanisms including microbial inoculation, higher hydrogen sulfide production, and more exposed concrete pipe surfaces. Utilizing a newly discovered and environmentally benign antimicrobial agent, this project will develop an innovative technology and the underpinning science to control the corrosion-inducing sewer biofilms. To prevent corrosion of new sewers, a precursor chemical agent can be added into the cement as an admixture. The corrosion-resistant concrete material can also be used to repair/rehabilitate existing sewers. The project will substantially enhance the service life of both existing and new sewer systems in tropical Queensland, minimizing the service threat posed by climate change and extreme weather.
Resource Recovery The AWMC is enabling enhanced profitability and sustainability in the agri-industry through integrated waste treatment and resource recovery across the production chain. This includes next generation fertilizers from waste for enhanced plant agriculture, next generation feeds and resource recovery from animal production, and recovery of high value materials from animal and food processing.
Professor Damien Batstone Deputy Director - Education d.batstone@awmc.uq.edu.au
Nutrient Recovery from Agri-Waste Fertilizer is one of the most significant on-farm input cost (~25%) for modern agriculture. Price instability due to a substantial increase in world demand for fertilizers, limited recourses and costs associated with production has put financial pressure on farmers in Australia. There is a substantial amount of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) in agri-industrial waste streams in Australia, and if recovered fully this could significantly reduce reliance on expensive manufactured fertilizers.
Professor Batstone has over 20 years experience in wastewater process modelling, design, and environmental biotechnology. He is extensively involved as lead consultant at the AWMC with a wide range of industrial partners around the world. Professor Batstone is also heavily involved in the Chemical Engineering programme at UQ, leading major courses, including Process Modelling and Statistics, as well as teaching into other courses.
The key objectives of the project are to demonstrate nutrient recovery technologies at pilot scale, develop novel nutrient recovery technologies, and agronomic testing of the recovered product.
Next Generation Technology The AWMC is developing technologies that will enable the next generation of wastewater treatment for full resource recovery, including bioenergy, nutrients and emerging products such as microbial protein and biopolymers. This includes complete treatment plant replacements such as high rate activated sludge, anaerobic membrane bioreactors, and photobioreactors, as well as enabling technologies such as Anammox and electrodialysis for concentrate recovery.
FNA-Based Technology A wastewater treatment plant should be operated to achieve satisfactory biological nutrient removal, maximum bioenergy recovery and minimum sludge production. However, the achievement of the above goals is often hindered by the low biodegradability of secondary sludge. The project team has found that free nitrous acid (FNA) was strongly biocidal to secondary sludge. In addition, FNA was found to be more biocidal to nitrite oxidizing bacteria than to ammonium oxidizing bacteria. Based on these findings, we developed a sludge pre-treatment strategy based on FNA to enhance methane production through anaerobic digestion of secondary sludge and to reduce sludge production during aerobic digestion of secondary sludge. We also developed an FNA-based sludge treatment strategy to selectively eliminate NOB and achieve nitrogen removal via the nitrite pathway. The FNA-based technology has attracted great attention from both academic community and industry. UniQuest Pty Ltd, the commercial arm of The University of Queensland, is currently commercializing the FNA-based technology throughout the world.
Water, Health, Environment The AWMC has joined with a number of research Institutes and Schools across UQ to form a virtual centre for conducting research activities relating to environmental health science. This centre, the Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Science, brings together a wide range of expertise from different disciplines to enhance collaborative research in the field.
Professor Jurg Keller Deputy Director - Research j.keller@awmc.uq.edu.au
Understanding and Controlling Outbreaks of Legionnaires Disease A project currently being developed through the alliance is to better understand and control outbreaks of Legionella pneumophila that causes Legionnaires’ disease. The project will improve insight of the ecology of Legionella within water supply pipelines (especially in hospitals) and aims to develop biofilm control to reduce the organisms infectious occurrence.
Professor Keller, IWA and ATSE Fellow, is a recognised world leader in water research, particularly in biological wastewater treatment, environmental biotechnology, microbial fuel cells and water recycling. While working at the leading edge of research and development in this field, he is also heavily involved in collaborative and consulting projects with industry partners across Australia and New Zealand. Professor Keller also currently holds the position of Chief Research Officer of the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities.
Integrated Urban Water While the integrated urban water management concept has been around for many years, getting practical implementation and demonstrating benefits from novel ideas has often been difficult. We cover technologies and solutions that can achieve benefits across the entire urban water network, from drinking water to wastewater treatment, and various integration concepts of decentralised solutions in the centralised networks. An increasing focus of our work is also on recovering resources through water recycling or direct separation and recovery of valuable compounds from urban water streams.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Urban Water Systems Climate change caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is one of the major challenges facing mankind today. Water and wastewater systems contribute to greenhouse gas emissions through both energy consumption (indirect emissions of CO2) and emissions of fugitive gases such as nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) (direct emissions). CH4 and N2O are two potent greenhouse gases with global warming potentials 25 and 310 times respectively, that of CO2 on a 100-year horizon. Their contributions to total net anthropogenic radiative forcing are very significant, at 30% and 10%, respectively. Both CH4 and N2O are trace gases in the atmosphere. They have, however, attracted much scientific attention due to their roles in the tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry. Our greenhouse gas research project focuses on the understanding and mitigation of CH4 and N2O emissions from wastewater collection and treatment systems, as well as from receiving waters.
Facts & Figures
Global Partnerships
2014 Research Funding by Sector
Research Funding ($AU Millions)
As of September 2016
Peer Reviewed Journal Publications
Advanced Water Management Centre Level 4, Gehrmann Building (60) The University of Queensland Brisbane, Qld 4072, Australia
T: +61 7 3365 4730 W: www.awmc.uq.edu.au E: awmc@awmc.uq.edu.au Twitter: @uqwater Facebook.com/AdvancedWaterManagementCentre