Conventional media filtration is the most common process used as one of the main barriers for pathogen and solids removal in water treatment. The Australian Drinking Water Guideline (2011) includes LRV credits for organisms based on treated water turbidity limits. However, the effectiveness of this treatment process in removing pathogens is not typically validated and performance can vary greatly between treatment plants. Hence, understanding the actual LRV performance of media filters is critical to both designing new treatment facilities and understanding any treatment shortfall for existing facilities.

A related protocol for the validation of membrane filters could potentially be adapted for the validation of granular filters. However, the requirements from health regulators, for validation design and safety considerations if surrogate organisms are used, are unknown. The practicality of application in full scale drinking water treatment plants to incorporate any health regulator needs also needs consideration. Therefore, capturing the health policy positions in various Australian jurisdictions and understanding any practical constraints to full-scale validation prior to developing the validation guide are critical to success.

This project will use a progressive approach to determine the regulatory requirements for the validation of drinking water processes, identify any practical constraints for full-scale process validation, and develop a validation protocol or identify further work required to address knowledge gaps or concerns related to the safety or technical feasibility of conducting full-scale validation of granular media filters (to produce drinking water in particular).

This project will develop a Novel Phycoremediation technology “phycosol” for winery process effluent with simultaneously generation of biomass for biofuels and other beneficial products enhancing the circular economy.

PhD Thesis underway by Praveen Kuppan.

Algal and cyanobacterial blooms incur current treatment challenges such as high operational cost, disinfectant by-product formation, and the requirement to separate oxidants from solution after the oxidation. Advanced oxidation methods, such as cold plasma activated bubbles (CPAB), have the potential to overcome the current challenges . CPAB are bubbles containing partially or fully ionised gas that utilise the ambient condition of gas and an electric discharge to produce and deliver highly reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, such as ozone, hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl, superoxide, and nitric oxide radicals. This project will examine methods to optimise the application of CPAB across a range of algal and cyanobacterial species to increase its technology readiness level.

PhD Thesis underway by Angelina.

By dewatering sludge, wastes can be efficiently and reliably concentrated into filter cakes with high solids for cost-effective disposal. Better understanding of the relationship between non-degradable organic matter and sludge rheology and dewaterability can lead to Optimization of dewatering which can significantly reduce the cost of wastewater treatment by minimizing the cost of sludge management, transportation, and final disposal.

PhD Thesis underway by Ali Tabatabaei.

The aim of this project is to determine which physical features of textiles increase fibre release during washing, so they can be reengineered to minimise environmental impacts, improving the quality of bioresources such as effluent water and biosolids.

Thesis underway.

Biosolids generated during the wastewater treatment processes has become a major burden of wastewater treatment plants and an unresolved problem for major cities around the world. It is thus imperative to identify a sustainable way for the proper management of biosolids. The overarching aim of this research is to establish a robust assessment framework to estimate the environmental sustainability implications of different pathways for biosolids processing and resource recovery in an Australian context and provide information to decision makers and practitioners of the water industry on the performance of different treatment scenarios.

PhD Thesis underway by Jingwen Luo.

The project aims to investigate the impacts of biosolids biochar immobilized bacteria on soil microbial activity and diversity during arsenic phytoremediation.

Thesis underway.

Petroleum hydrocarbon is one of the most common soil contaminants in many countries. Considering the magnitude and impact of this problem, remediating contaminated soils are inevitable. Several methods have been used to remediate hydrocarbon-contaminated soil, however, some of the methods are not cost effective or environment friendly. Biochar, a low cost carbonaceous product, has gained relevance for remediation of contaminated soil.

In my research, I am using biosolids as a source of biochar production. The use of biosolids in production of biochar and its subsequent application in remediation provides an opportunity to re-purpose waste from the water industry for valuable use.

Thesis underway.

The sustainable application of biosolids to agricultural land is being limited by many contaminants such as microbial pathogens, PFAS, microplastics, and heavy metals. The thermal treatment of biosolids via pyrolysis can destroy the microbial and organic contaminants; however, heavy metals remain a persistent problem with biosolids and its thermally derived products. Therefore, pyrolysis alone may not satisfactorily deal with the limiting problem of heavy metals in biosolids and biochar. This work is developing an integrated acid extraction and pyrolysis process to reduce the heavy metals load in biosolids and convert the pre-treated biosolids to useful carbon and nutrient rich biochar and valuable chemicals.

PhD Thesis underway by Ibrahim Hakeem.

Energy sector focusses to be able to meet all the requirements of sustainable national development of energy resources and efficient utilization of its diverse sources. Waste-to-energy technologies consist of various methods for extracting energy from waste materials. These methods include thermo-chemical processes such as combustion, gasification, and pyrolysis. These thermo chemical processes are highly endothermic in nature and have high energy consumption.  Fluidised bed exchangers play an important role in the “clean wastes technology” because of its high thermal efficiency, better scalability, better temperature control and high heat transfer surface area. The current project work focusses on understanding the impact of different tube configurations (size and numbers) on the fluidisation behaviour, along with heat transfer mechanisms. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling-based approach will be used to evaluate the hydrodynamics of the above system.  The results from this study, will be used to develop and establish correlations between tube size, shape, gas flow rates, and particle heat transfer mechanisms.

PhD Thesis underway by Shivani Agnihotri.