Frost & Sullivan has selected ThermoEnergy Corp. as the recipient of the 2005 Technology Innovation Award in the municipal and industrial wastewater treatment market for its contributions to the advancement of environment-friendly wastewater treatment processes. This award specifically recognizes the company's ammonia recovery process (ARP) that converts the ammonia found in wastewater plants to ammonium sulfate, a commercial grade fertilizer; and the ThermoFuel process, a renewable energy technology which enables upgrades of wastewater treatment facilities to Exceptional Quality (EQ) standards.
Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents the Technology Innovation Award to a company that has carried out new research; which has resulted in innovation(s) that have or are expected to bring significant contributions to the industry in terms of adoption, change, and competitive posture. The award lauds the quality and depth of a company's research and development program as well as the vision and risk-taking that enabled it to undertake such an endeavor.
"Significantly, ARP is the only ammonia removal technology that reclaims ammonia for use in a consumer-ready fertilizer product," said Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Miriam Nagel. "The twice-patented process has received verification from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Environmental Technology Evaluation Program."
ARP has proved its efficacy even in large-scale demonstration projects such as the one with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection in 1998, and in Colton, California in 2000. These demonstration projects led to a $7 million contract with City of New York, where the ARP process will be used to significantly reduce the discharge of nitrogen (ammonia) from the Bowery Bay water pollution control plant into the Upper East River, which will improve water quality within the Long Island Sound.
The ARP process extracts ammonia from wastewater using reversible chemisorption techniques and converts it into standard commercial-grade ammonium sulfate fertilizer. ARP is primarily used for municipal wastewater treatment and the curing of wastewater discharge from large concentrated animal farming operations including dairy, pork, beef, and poultry facilities.
As a pioneer of advanced wastewater treatment technology, ThermoEnergy continues to optimize the ARP process design in its engineering and laboratory facilities near Boston, MA. One of the results is the expansion of its treatment capability over a range of ammonia concentrations, from 10 to more than 10,000 parts per million, to recover a concentrated ammonium sulfate product.
Meanwhile, the ThermoFuel process combines advanced primary sludge digestion with hydrothermal treatment of waste-activated sludge to expand the capacity of municipal wastewater facilities. This creates biosolids with the least health risk and it also assists in upgrading wastewater treatment plants to the EPA-designated EQ class.
"Apart from the ARP technology and the ThermoFuel process, ThermoEnergy's wastewater treatment technologies include the patented Enhanced Biogas Production process, which significantly improves digester performance and methane production," notes Nagel. "The company has also developed the ThermoEnergy Integrated Power System (TIPS) process, an advanced power plant design that converts fossil fuels and biomass into energy without producing air emissions."
Source: ThermoEnergy Corp.
