Reducing toxicity of waste streams

KTP Associate

The Associate – Dr Tom Bean

The KTP has helped me develop significant project and time management skills and experience of working in an innovative company with a team of highly qualified engineers, regulatory experts and business people and the communication and relationship management skills required to interact with these groups. I also now have experience of the application of an academic study to help a company achieve commercial success.

From a technical perspective, I have gained significant commercial knowledge of the waste management sector through market research and an understanding of the regulatory landscape that governs the waste treatment sector and the barriers to innovation faced when trying to apply a ‘one size fits all’ regulatory solution. I also now have a greater technical understanding of pyrolysis and gasification processes and its role in waste treatment and a deepening of analytical chemistry skills including LC-MS/MS, FT-ICR-MS and use of risk assessment models to evaluate efficacy.

I was a finalist in the Environmental Protection UK and Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management ‘student’ and ‘newly qualified scientist’ competitions. I presented the results of the project at the UK finals in Bristol (September) and Liverpool (November 2014).

Academic

Academic Lead – Professor Alistair Boxall

York is a world leader in understanding the impacts of pharmaceuticals on the natural environment. One of the exciting things about this project is that it has demonstrated that the PyroPure® system provides a practical and cost-effective solution for reducing the emissions of pharmaceuticals to rivers and soils. The positive findings of our project mean that in the very near future, PyroPure® machines could be installed in hospitals, pharmacies and pharmaceutical manufacturing sites across the globe. This will provide big benefits to environmental quality.

It is great that York will have played a key role in realising the potential of the innovative technology for treating pharmaceutical wastes while protecting the health of the natural environment. We are already discussing a series of follow on initiatives with PyroPure Ltd that will lead to a longer term research programme on the treatment of chemical wastes, the incorporation of the project as a case study in undergraduate teaching and student placements.