Cuong Dao

Hydrothermal Liquefaction (HTL) is shown to be a promising method of converting wet organic waste into renewable bio-fuel and the remaining aqueous product that is generated during the HTL process contains a high amount of soluble organic material that can be further processed through anaerobic digestion (AD) to produce methane-rich biogas. However, this aqueous product also has a large amount of nutrients, particularly ammonia nitrogen that is toxic in high concentrations to the microbial community used for anaerobic digestion. For my research, I will investigate how to remove and recover ammonia nitrogen from HTL aqueous product using an ion exchanging zeolite called clinoptilolite.