Hong Kong is actively promoting green technologies in order to reduce carbon emissions. Implementing anaerobic digestion (AD) technology to convert food waste (FW) into biogas for electricity generation is one of the promising initiatives. However, the volume of digestate and recycling problems have yet to be broken through. Dr Ben Shao-Yuan LEU, Associate Professor of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, has led a research project to develop an ammonia pretreatment system to minimise odour, reduce the land footprint of digested solids, and produce high-quality organic fertiliser.
In a recent interview with Ta Kung Pao, Dr LEU shared that his developed system will be applicable for achieving energy-efficient carbon sequestration at the Organic Resource Recovery Center (O-Parks). Specifically, an innovative Combined Thermal with Free Ammonia Pretreatment (CTFAP) System will be established to destroy flocs, extracellular polymeric substances and refractory organics (e.g., aromatic contents like lignin) for enhanced total solids reduction. This research project has been funded by the Green Tech Fund.
In addition, Dr LEU revealed that another research team of PolyU has been working on ammonia-nitrogen power generation, and they may collaborate in combining technologies to explore further use of ammonia-nitrogen in the future.