BC Water and Waste Association 2015 Student Design Competition
Team members (from left to right) Brenden Vissers, Stephanie Doherty, Allison Matfin, Maureen Long, Clayton McBride
Project name: Biomass to Biogas: Recommendations for Anaerobic Digestion at the Kelowna Wastewater Treatment Plant
The winners of the BCWWA student design competition have the opportunity to compete in the North American student design competition at WEFTEC, the Water Environment Federation’s annual conference and technical exhibition.
For the BCWWA 2015 Student Design Competition, teams were to develop preliminary concept designs and indicative capital costs for an anaerobic digestion system to digest sludge to produce biogas at the City of Kelowna’s wastewater treatment plant. The winning team recommended multi-stage anaerobic digestion preceded by thermal conditioning. Benefits of the system were identified to include: production of electrical and thermal energy, recovery of biosolids and nutrients for use as fertilizer, and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 90% compared to conventional approaches.