BOKU Student Receives Student Award for Research on Biogas Production from Industrial Wastewater

At the 32nd European Biomass Conference and Exhibition (EUBCE), researcher Ferdinand Hummel from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) was honoured with the Student Award for his oral presentation on innovative approaches to resource recovery from industrial wastewater. The work was conducted together with Wolfgang Gabauer and  Werner Fuchs and is published in the official EUBCE conference proceedings.

The study, titled “Co-treatment of Wastewater from the Meat-producing Industry and Blood-waste in an Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (AnMBR)”, explores how wastewater from meat processing facilities can be treated more efficiently while simultaneously generating renewable energy. In a lab-scale anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR), the research team investigated the co-digestion of slaughterhouse wastewater with blood waste.

The results show that adding blood as a co-substrate significantly increased methane production compared to treating wastewater alone. At the same time, the process achieved very high removal efficiencies of organic dry matter, reaching an average of 99.1 %. While the digestion of blood introduced challenges such as increased hydrogen sulfide in the biogas and higher ammonium concentrations in the permeate, the study demonstrated that these by-products can be effectively managed and valorised using additional treatment steps, including biological desulfurization and membrane-based ammonia recovery.

The research highlights the potential of integrated anaerobic treatment systems to transform industrial waste streams into valuable resources such as renewable biogas and reusable nutrients. Such approaches support the transition toward a circular bioeconomy by improving wastewater treatment while recovering energy and materials from residual streams.

Read the article here.