I am Chea Eliyan, and I recently joined the Environmental Engineering Research Group of the Department of Energy and Technology, SLU, in a sandwich mode Ph.D. program. As part of this program, I will spend half the time here at SLU and another 50% time at my home country, Cambodia at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP). The SIDA-RUPP bilateral program fully supports this study as well as RUPP’s research capacity development.
My Ph.D. research project focuses on nutrient recovery from fecal sludge for sustainable sanitation management in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This study will first investigate the current fecal sludge management and the flow of valuable resources within the city, from generation to final disposal or end-use. Physical, chemical and biological properties of faecal sludge will be characterized by taking sludge samples from E&T trucks operators. Added to this will be the monitoring of biogas production and concentration. Mass flow analysis will be performed to quantify the flow of nutrients (N, P, K), organic pollutants load and biogas. The later part of this study will look at the environmental risk such as potential eutrophication to rivers and streams and GHGs emission as the contribution source to Climate Change, and microbial health risk assessment. The last part of this project will look into the possible alternative options where the resources in the fecal sludge are best captured and reused by applying Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis.