Seminário Investigação CBQF/LAE "Innovating wastewater treatment - Aerobic granular sludge processes"

Venue: EBI Auditorium

A Escola Superior de Biotecnologia da Universidade Católica Portuguesa tem o prazer de convidar toda a comunidade para participar nos Seminário Investigação CBQF/LAE "Innovating wastewater treatment - Aerobic granular sludge processes"

The Faculty of Biotechnology has the pleasure to invite all the community to the Research Seminar CBQF/LAE "Innovating wastewater treatment - Aerobic granular sludge processes".

Speaker: Mark van Loosdrecht (Professor in Environmental Biotechnology at the Delft University of Technology,

The Netherlands) Wastewater treatment is for more than a century depending on the activated sludge process as the core of the wastewater treatment plant. Due to slow settling of the flocculent biomass these processes have a rather large space demand. Research in the morphogenesis of microbial aggregates has shown that this morphology largely depends on similar factors that also determine if a mineral precipitates as a compact crystal or as a floc-like amorphous structure. Based on this insight a methodology has been developed to grow granular sludge in aerobic wastewater treatment processes. This well settling sludge (setting velocity 10-30 m/h) does not need external clarifiers to separate treated wastewater and sludge. The lecture will focus on the development of the aerobic granular sludge process (market name Nereda) and it's basic principles.

Short Biography
Mark van Loosdrecht is Professor in Environmental Biotechnology at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. He graduated (MSc and PhD) from Wageningen University. His PhD topic was a combination of microbiology and colloid chemistry. He was appointed at Delft in 1988 and became full professor in 1998. His research is characterized by the combination of scientific understanding of complex systems and development of new processes. Dr. van Loosdrecht's scientific interests are mainly related to biofilm processes, nutrient conversion processes and the role of storage polymers in microbial ecology. In particular, he is interested in new processes related to wastewater treatment and resource recovery. His research has resulted in several processes currently applied on full scale such as the Sharon process, Anammox process and Nereda process. The current research orients on the development of resource recovery processes (biopolymers and phosphate) from wastewater.