Resource recovery from e-waste as 2019 Lettinga Award winner!

We are excited to announce that the 2019 Lettinga Award is won by the project “Anaerobic bioreduction of waterborne element sulphide particles for recovery from electronic waste”, submitted by Dr. Simon Hageman.

The judges were unanimous about the project due to the potential great impact if proven successful. This year’s Lettinga Award call was for innovative project ideas for closing resource cycles by deploying anaerobic technology. The winner was announced during the closing ceremony of the IWA Anaerobic Digestion conference in Delft on June 26, 2019.

The submitted project concerns the application of anaerobic digestion of wastewaters from electronic waste to recover resources. E-waste recycling processes include an acid leaching step that results in a leachate containing finite and scarce metals (eg Cu, Zn, Mn, Bi, Ag, Se ...). The objective of this project idea is to bioprocess the waterborne sulfide particles to biogenic sulfide through anaerobic digestion. The resulting will be recovered metals of high quality and pure form that can be recycled into industrial applications.

The Lettinga Award, a cash prize of €10,000 is an initiative of the Lettinga Foundation. It is awarded to stimulate the development and implementation of innovative anaerobic digestion ideas. It is a biannual award that is organized each year when an IWA Anaerobic Digestion congress is held. The sponsors of the Lettinga Award 2019 are Paques, Biothane and LeAF.

The project idea was submitted by Simon Hageman. Dr Hageman is a lecturer and researcher at the Sustainable Energy Systems group at Saxion University of Applied Sciences in Enschede, the Netherlands.