Upcoming webinar: Ionizing Radiation for the Treatment of Waste Activated Sludge
Join the iia for a webinar exploring how ionizing radiation can improve waste activated sludge treatment and increase biogas production.
Tuesday 24th November 2026
9am CET (8am GMT, 4pm CST)
In this webinar, Dr Shijun He, Associate Professor at Tsinghua University, will present “Advanced Anaerobic Digestion of Waste Activated Sludge with Ionizing Radiation Pretreatment.”
The presentation will explore how ionizing radiation and thermal hydrolysis, used separately or in combination, can help break down waste activated sludge and release organic materials for biogas production.
Research shows that radiation alone can increase biogas production by 36.5% to 38.9%, while combining radiation with thermal hydrolysis can increase production by up to 40% to 50%. This approach offers a promising way to improve sludge treatment and support renewable energy production.
Presentation abstract:
“Radiation, thermal hydrolysis (TH), and the combination processes of radiation and TH, may effectively promote the waste activated sludge (WAS) disintegration, releasing a lot of organic components such as proteins and polysaccharides from WAS to the liquid phase. Our research shows that the pre-treatment of WAS with 10 kGy irradiation alone just increased sludge disintegration by 4.1~9.6% whereas TH at 120℃ or 140℃ may improve sludge disintegration by approximately 22-25%. However, the biogas production by radiation increased significantly by 36.5%~38.9% compared with the original materials. Radiation combined with TH pretreatment at the lower temperature (for example, 100℃ to 140℃) can obviously avoid the refractory products of the Maillard reaction and then promote the biogas production up to 40-50% in the subsequent anaerobic digestion. Therefore, radiation combined with TH is a promising method to deal with WAS treatment in Asia and Europe.”
- Host: Peng WEI – China Representative, International Irradiation Association (iia)
- Presenter: Dr. Shijun HE – Associate Professor, Tsinghua University
The webinar will include a live Q&A session and will be recorded for later viewing on the iia website and YouTube channel.