An international centre of excellence in innovative water technology and management
WORLD CLASS RESEARCH ADDRESSING INDUSTRY NEEDS Vision The adoption of leading edge knowledge and innovation to ensure an optimally integrated, resource efficient and quality focused Australian water industry.
Mission The AWMC provides core contributions to the industry to achieve this vision by building: Capacity, through advanced training and career development opportunities, a world-class research higher degree program, educational courses that meet industry needs and dissemination of research and innovation advances to the industry. Capability, through a research program of the highest scientific quality that is addressing industry needs, with a focus on advancing fundamental knowledge and the development and application of innovation-focused, sustainable solutions to challenging environmental problems. Cooperation, by developing responsive, long-term relationships throughout the industry that are built on mutual respect and tangible benefits.
DISCOVER The Advanced Water Management Centre is an internationally recognised centre of excellence in innovative water technology and management. Its particular strength is the close integration of biological and chemical sciences, process engineering and informatics. This unique combination forms the basis for ground-breaking research but also offers exciting opportunities for the development and application of user-specific solutions to challenging environmental problems.
Anaerobic Technologies Program
Established in 1996, the AWMC research program focused on the challenges of the protection of waterways and the reduction of nutrients in the environment. The AWMC led the world in nutrient removal, innovative processes and process control of wastewater treatment plants. The impact of this early work is still being applied today by water authorities both nationally and international, and local agri-industries. Today the AWMC still shows great relevance to the global water industry, covering most of the Australian Urban Water Services Cycle. The combined efforts of our programs are achieving sustainable outcomes for the water industry, have challenged the industry views greenhouse gas emissions, added value to our waste processes and discovered how to protect our water resources and critical infrastructure.
The program has three key themes; our Process Optimisation theme is looking at existing applications and developing improved operational strategies or novel technologies to maximize value and improve sustainability. The Agri-industrial theme is encouraging uptake of anaerobic technology among agri-industries using a combination of low cost infrastructure and longterm technology experience. The Fundamentals theme focuses on developing advanced bio-simulation tools ranging from understanding and predicting the relationships and interactions between individual micro-organisms to predicting how full scale processes will respond to changes in substrate composition or environmental conditions. The knowledge we develop in the laboratory feeds directly into our full-scale implementation and consulting work.
Microbial Ecology & Physiology Program
The Centre for Microbial Electrosynthesis (CEMES)
Microorganisms are essential in driving a wide range of processes and reactions in nature and in engineered environments. The microbial ecology and physiology program is focused on understanding and influencing microbiological processes important to water and wastewater management. In order to improve the efficiency and stability of beneficial processes, and minimize the consequences of undesirable microbial activity, it is critical to have detailed knowledge about the composition and functionality of the microbial communities in these habitats. Only a small fraction of microorganisms known to exist in the environment have been characterised. Researchers are utilising the most advanced molecular and microbiological approaches and facilities to improve the understanding of these systems and provide relevant information for both scientific discovery and practical applications.
The vision of CEMES is to enable the development of technologies that allow electricity driven organic bio-conversions scalable to industrial application. This vision encompasses an ambitious and promising research avenue of utilising microbial catalysts to enable electrochemical conversions for a range of applications, both for industrial bioproduction and environmental processes. To address the range of challenges and opportunities in this field CEMES has in the last 12 months expanded its scope to incorporate all of the bio-electrochemical research in the AWMC in order to rapidly progress this emerging field.
Effective resource recovery and recycling is one of the great challenges for the future of process engineering. At the AWMC, we are embracing this challenge through research and development of anaerobic biotechnology. The anaerobic technology group has developed over the last six years to over $8M in total funding with a team of 25 researchers, engineering professionals and research students.
Environmental Electrochemistry Program The AWMC has recognised the increasing role that electrochemistry can play in the development of novel concepts and innovative processes for wastewater and water treatment. A growing number of new concepts in the areas of water, wastewater and waste treatment are based on electrochemistry. Particularly promising ideas include nutrient recovery from wastewater by electrodialysis, sewer corrosion prevention via simultaneous
URBAN AND INDUSTRIAL WATER MANAGEMENT Microbial Ecology & Physiology
Anaerobic Technologies
Electrochemistry
Drinking & Recycled Water
RESOURCE EFFICIENCY RESOURCE RECOVERY
Nutrient Removal & Recovery
caustic and oxygen generation from sewage, coagulant recovery from chemical precipitation sludge by electrochemical sulfide cycling, removal of heavy metals from waste sludge, treatment of acid mine drainage streams, and removal of persistent and toxic trace organics from drinking water, wastewater and brine streams. Drinking & Recycled Water Program The usage of alternate water sources has brought about an end to the monopoly of the centralised “one-size-fits-all” water supply in an urban water cycle operating on a produce-use-waste principle. A diversified classification of end-uses has led to the production of fit-for-purpose hydric resources, and this paradigm shift has generated a wealth of challenges in regards to designing and integrating new treatments, process control and water quality management strategies. The Drinking and Recycled Water Research Program focuses on technology and application optimization and innovation for a broad variety of technologies and alternative water supply options. These include centralised drinking water and recycled water production as well as storm water harvesting. To design a treatment solution adequately, the key is an in-depth understanding of water quality in its broadest possible sense. Hence, the second important component of our work focuses on water quality, including source water characterisation, and the management of trace organic contaminants and disinfection by-products throughout treatment. Greenhouse Gas Program The greenhouse gas research program focuses on the two major fugitive greenhouse gases, nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4), from wastewater collection systems, wastewater treatment plants, waterways (estuaries, bays) and water storage systems. We not only quantify their emission from different systems, but also investigate the fundamental metabolism involved in the production and consumption of these gases. In addition, we are an international leader in the modelling of N2O and CH4 emissions from water and wastewater systems. Over the past few years, the GHG research group has attracted over $2M competitive funding, with strong support from 10 water utilities both in Australia and overseas. In 2013, we published more than 20 scientific papers in the highly ranked journals in the fields of environmental science and engineering and microbiology, including one in Nature, a prestigious journal with a very broad readership in the scientific community. The knowledge generated based on these findings has supported the Australian water utilities to accurately estimate the fugitive GHG emissions from their systems and to develop mitigation strategies.
Sewer Systems
Greenhouse Gases
Nutrient & Resource Recovery Program The Nutrient and Resource Recovery program is focused on delivering a substantial fraction of agricultural fertilizer requirements by recycling nutrients and resources from waste and wastewater, from both domestic and industrial sources. The team is specifically focused towards a future where wastewater treatment plants act as nutrient and resource recovery plants, producing a manufactured fertilizer product, energy and water for recycling. The program has a broad application range across process development (domestic and industrial), technology development, and product development and strategic focus. Sewer Corrosion and Odour Research Program 10 years of research to put science in sewers Our research on sewer corrosion and odour commenced in 2003 when serious corrosion problems were challenging the water industry, and the lack of fundamental knowledge support for the industry were brought to our attention. The ‘program’ started with a small research project funded by Gold Coast City Council. The program developed rapidly with the establishment of a strategic partnership with the Australian water industry, leading to two landmark ARC industry linkage projects. The Biotransformation project was awarded to the AWMC, Gold Coast City Council and Sydney Water Corporation in 2003, which was followed by the Sewer Corrosion and Odour Research (SCORe) project, with 15 research and industry partners across Australia and four international collaborators in 2007. Reflecting on more than a decade of our sewer research program, we are very proud of our achievements in terms of both scientific and industry impact. The new knowledge, innovative technologies and powerful tools we have delivered, and the industry capabilities we have assisted to build, are fundamentally changing sewer corrosion and odour management in Australia. The impact of this work is global and long lasting, having already brought documented cost savings to the Australian water industry in the order of $400 million. But we have not yet finished this critically important work. Several significant follow-up research projects are currently underway with continued, strong collaboration with industry partners from Australia and overseas. We are confident that we will continue to deliver innovative and practically valuable outcomes.
LEARN A focus on education has always been one of the AWMC’s strengths, and a key focus is mentoring and continuing education at all team levels. One of our core activities is mentoring and educating supervisors of research higher degree (RHD) students with targeted staff development programmes for academic and research career staff. Our goal is life-long learning, communication at all levels, and professionalism as experts in our fields. This vision translates directly into quantifiable positive outcomes. In teaching, our academics and PhD students interact directly with undergraduates in core Chemical Engineering and Science courses, as ResTeach Affiliate Academics and Teaching Assistants respectively. The AWMC strongly supports UQ’s ResTeach programme, with many of our academics leading major courses with outstanding course rankings, as well as strong recruitment of undergraduates into our RHD programme and development of academic skills such as process analysis and statistics.
publications. We also supervise students in research undergraduate programmes and non-RHD research projects, including engineering inquiry, and chemistry and biotechnology honours programmes. This commitment to education and communication is across a range of other platforms. A number of academics teach into professional development courses such as the International Winter Environmental School (IWES), and we also offer internal courses in a wide range of subjects including mathematical modelling and molecular methods for microbiology. These capabilities are internationally recognised and we regularly provide teaching services internationally, and receive reciprocal visits by internationally recognised educators.
Our focus on PhD education and technically strong graduates translates to strong employer demand and high impact student presentations and
ENGAGE
Prof Zhiguo Yuan Director zhiguo@awmc.uq.edu.au
Prof Jurg Keller Deputy Director - Research
j.keller@awmc.uq.edu.au
Level 4 Gehrmann Building (60) Research Road, St. Lucia Campus The University of Queensland Brisbane, Qld 4072, Australia
Prof Damien Batstone Deputy Director - Education damienb@awmc.uq.edu.au
Telephone: +61 7 3365 4730 Facsimile: +61 7 3365 4726 Website: www.awmc.uq.edu.au Email: awmc@awmc.uq.edu.au
Dr Sandra Hall Engagement and Business Development Manager s.hall@awmc.uq.edu.au