PhD Studentship - Process Industries: Net Zero. Whole system optimisation of bioresources

Start Date 15th September 2025

Award Duration 4 years

Sponsor EPSRC

Supervisors Dr Chris O’Malley 

This PhD project is part of the CDT in Process Industries: Net Zero. The successful PhD student will be co-supervised by academics from the Process Intensification Group at Newcastle University.

NWL operates two Advanced Anaerobic Digestion Plants (AAD), one on Teesside and one on Tyneside. These plants process more than 70,000 tonnes of biosolids, generating 160GWh of biofuels. Most of the biosolids are collected by road from across the North East of England – from the Scottish Border to the North York Moors. The biosolids have a high water content – meaning NWL transfers around 750,000 tonnes of material each year into the two sites and following treatment, the residual product is deposited to land as fertiliser – a further 100,000 tonnes of material moved. This haulage activity uses approximately 1.6million litres of diesel each year.

This project will build on existing optimisation work by Newcastle University and NWL and will aim to define the ideal operational strategy for the whole bioresources system. Key areas of focus will be:

• Biosolids movements (optimisation/minimisation of road movements);
• Fleet transition (from diesel to electric/alternative fuels);
• AAD optimisation (building on existing optimiser platform); and
• Land deposit optimisation in a changing regulatory environment.