Adjunct Professor
troy.vassos@ubc.ca
Home department: Civil Engineering
Website: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/researcher/18901-vassos
Research Interests
- Acetic Acid Production
- Anaerobic Digestion
- Water Reclamation & Reuse
- Rare Earth Elements Mine Process Water Treatment
Current Research Projects
- Anaerobic Digestion: I have recently obtained funding to carry out follow-up research into methods of establishing conditions that will accelerating organic waste fermentation and the conversion of long chain volatile fatty acids into acetic acid as an enhanced feedstock for anaerobic production of renewable natural gas. The current research program is an extension of work carried out almost 25 years ago investigating conditions that resulted in extremely high yields of acetate. While that work was targeted at producing acetate as an electron donor for domestic wastewater biological nutrient removal processes, the work also confirmed that acetate was rapidly converted to biogas in anaerobic reactors, offering the potential to storage organic waste energy in the form of acetate which could subsequently be used to produce methane gas on demand. The original research focused on the fermentation of municipal primary sludge. The current research program will investigate performance with various waste organic feedstock sources, including mixed waste streams, and evaluate alternative mechanisms for creating optimal fermentation conditions.