VATIS UPDATE Article

According to a new research at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), wastewater treatment plants may one day turn ordinary sewage into biocrude oil. “There is plenty of carbon in municipal waste water sludge and interestingly, there are also fats. The fats or lipids appear to facilitate the conversion of other materials in the wastewater such as toilet paper, keep the sludge moving through the reactor, and produce a very high quality biocrude that, when refined, yields fuels such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuels,” said Corinne Drennan, at PNNL.

The technology, hydrothermal liquefaction, mimics the geological conditions Earth uses to create crude oil. It uses high pressure and temperature to achieve in minutes something that takes Mother Nature millions of years. The resulting material is similar to petroleum pumped out of the ground, with a small amount of water and oxygen mixed in. This biocrude can then be refined using conventional petroleum refining operations, the researchers said. With this technology, a single person could generate two to three gallons of biocrude per year, according to an estimate by PNNL.

Sewage, or more specifically sewage sludge, has long been viewed as a poor ingredient for producing biofuel because it’s too wet. The approach being studied by PNNL eliminates the need for drying required in a majority of current thermal technologies which historically has made wastewater to fuel conversion too energy intensive and expensive. Hydrothermal liquefaction may also be used to make fuel from other types of wet organic feedstock, such as agricultural waste, according to the researchers.