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Welcome
AD10 will total two opening and one closing plenary lectures, nine invited key-notes, one hundred and eighty platform presentations shared between four parallel sessions, three hundred and eighty seven poster papers, two workshops, and one round table. These presentations are representative of the rather large and diverse scope of anaerobic process-related activities that occur around the world, with forty-eight different countries represented. Topics cover municipal and industrial wastewater, sludge, contaminated soil and sediments, agricultural products and wastes, organic municipal solid waste, landfills management, biogas recovery; they include molecular and microbial ecology and engineering of bioprocesses in relation to hydrolysis, acidogenesis, hydrogenogenesis, methanogenesis, reductive dechlorination, nutrient removal, and biomass immobilization, technology development, instrumentation, control and automation, modeling, scale-up and large-scale operation, in-situ applications, physico-chemical and biological pre- and post-treatment techniques, energy prospects, cost-effectiveness assessment, and the role of anaerobic digestion with respect to sustainability, GHG mitigation, and environment criteria . All this knowledge and technical know-how will be shared at this Congress, where you will have the opportunity to review critically the latest ideas and effective practices in anaerobic digestion within a friendly and constructive environment, besides to watch or take part in the anaerobic lobby, at all levels of research, analysis, practice, management, decision making. Serge R. Guiot |
The National Research Council Canada organizes the 10th World Congress on Anaerobic Digestion (AD10) under the auspices of the International Water Association (IWA), from Sunday August 29th till Thursday, September 2nd, 2004. The aim of the Congress is to bring together researchers, industrial designers and contractors, present and future users, and government authorities to discuss the fundamentals, the application and the promotion of anaerobic bioconversion processes. A revival of interest in anaerobic digestion is palpable. An ever-increasing demand for sustainable development has stimulated political interest in measures that will decrease pollution and greenhouse gas (GHG) production by human activities. In response, several national governments have prepared objectives for the decades to come. In this respect, anaerobic waste processing has come into the forefront. Anaerobic digestion is clearly one of the answers to sustainable development since it reduces carbon pollution, provides peat-type organic amendment and "clean" fertilizers, and generates a "green" energy carrier. From being technology-pushed, anaerobic digestion is now becoming market-pulled, owing to societal concerns and demands.