U of Nevada tests sludge-to-power process

Biomass Magazine
September 2010
By Lisa Gibson
Posted September 20, 2010, at 1:43 p.m. CST

If a University of Nevada, Reno, research project works as planned, municipal wastewater treatment facilities could turn their sludge into power for their own operations.

Researchers are demonstrating their sludge-drying equipment at the Truckee Meadows Water Reclamation Facility and ultimately hope to gasify the dry sludge product to power the plant. The system currently takes 20 pounds of sludge per hour and produces about 3 pounds of dried powder, but would need to be about 100 hundreds times that size to be commercially attractive to the industry, according to Chuck Coronella, principle investigator for the project and associate professor of chemical engineering at the school.

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