UTS Faculty of Engineering has won Australian Research Council grants totalling $172,000 for two major wastewater recycling projects, with significant international collaboration.

The projects will be coordinated over two-years by Professor Saravanamuthu Vigneswaran and Dr Huu-Hao Ngo of the UTS Institute for Water & Environmental Resource.

A 2002 Linkage International Award will fund collaborative Australian/Japanese research into the development of a novel filtration system in wastewater treatment and reuse.

A Discovery Project Grant will support related research conducted by UTS and investigators in Japan, Korea and France, who hope to perfect a novel pre-treatment that combines physico-chemical processes and membrane filtration.

Professor Vigneswaran and Dr Ngo will develop at UTS a new flocculator filter system and their Japanese partners, Professor Hideki Harada and Associate Professor Akiyoshi Ohashi of the Nagaoka University of Technology (NUT) Japan, will evaluate a unique biological process developed at NUT.

Both teams envisage that merging their respective technologies will result in a cost-effective, low-maintenance environmentally friendly, biological and physico-chemical hybrid system capable of removing a wide range of pollutants from recycled wastewater. Their joint research will fully exploit the complementary expertise and facilities at UTS and NUT.

"Our strength lies in the physical and chemical treatment of wastewater known as floating medium flocculator," Professor Vigneswaran said.

"Our long-term aim is to develop a packaged treatment plant for small communities with a population of 5000 in both developed and developing countries. We also plan to use organic and new inorganic polymers approved by health authorities in order to minimise chemical usage and to keep chemical sludge to a minimum."

In related research funded by the Discovery Project Grant, Professor Vigneswaran and Dr Ngo will pool research resources with Professor Harada at NUT, Professor Hee Moon from the Chonnam National University, Korea, and Professor Roger Ben Aim from the Institut National des Sciences Appliques in Toulouse, France.