At Woodman Point Water Resource Recovery Facility, a major upgrade is helping to extract clean energy from wastewater and support a more sustainable future.
Wastewater might not be the first thing that comes to mind when we think about clean energy. But at the Woodman Point Water Resource Recovery Facility, engineers are transforming wastewater into a vital source of renewable power.
As Western Australia’s largest water resource recovery facility, Woodman Point already processes water from more than 900,000 homes and businesses each day. Now, it’s being upgraded to extract even more value from waste.
“The push is to get as close to carbon neutral as we can,” said Derek Upton, Principal Senior Project Manager at Water Corporation, who is overseeing the Woodman Point upgrade project.
“We’re taking a waste product which would otherwise be discharged to the ocean and trying to reuse it as much as possible.”
Boosting self-sufficiency through waste-to-energy innovations
Woodman Point’s $238.5 million upgrade, led by Integrate Alliance – which includes Water Corporation, Clough (part of the Webuild Group) and Jacobs – is focused on increasing the facility’s capacity and energy self-sufficiency. This will be achieved by expanding its ability to recover biosolids and biogas.
“Clough has a proud history of delivering complex infrastructure, and the Woodman Point Project is a great example of how we’re continuing that legacy with innovative thinking and technical expertise,” Clough Alliance Manager Marco Menegazzo said.
Clough has a long history with the Woodman Point plant, having worked with Water Corporation on plant upgrades as far back as 1999.
“We’re proud to be contributing to such a critical piece of water infrastructure for the Perth community, with a strong focus on safety, sustainability and quality delivery,” Menegazzo said.
Biosolids are produced from the solid material separated from wastewater as part of the water treatment process, and are used as a safe, sustainable fertiliser in broadacre agriculture and forestry, explained Upton. Biogas, a by-product of this process, is captured and used as a renewable energy source to power operations at the site or in other industries.
“At the moment, the energy recovery system provides about 25 per cent of the plant’s energy requirements,” said Upton. “Once we’re finished, we’ll be producing about 50 per cent of our energy needs on-site through recycled biogas.”
The project is expected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by around 5,600 t CO2-e annually due to reduced reliance on the grid, supporting Water Corporation’s target of net-zero emissions by 2035.
But the shift towards self-sufficiency isn’t just about sustainability, said Upton – it’s also practical.
“Being able to generate half our energy on-site means we can take pressure off the power network during peak demand periods.”
Novel techniques for resource recovery
As well as installing new solids handling systems and odour control systems to boost the facility’s capacity, the Integrate Alliance team is using thermal hydrolysis pretreatment (THP) to help process sludge into valuable biosolids and high-yield biogas.
“THP is a bit like a big pressure cooker. It breaks the sludge down so it’s easier to digest and turns it into something agriculture can actually use,” Upton said. “It’s a novel technology – this is only the third THP plant in Australia and the first in WA.”
This technique is critical to the team’s goal to raise solids treatment at the facility from 78 to 120 t per day.
Conducting this work while the facility remains fully operational is no easy task, he added.
“As part of this project, we’re replacing our inlet screens at the treatment plant, which is important since THP is quite susceptible to rags and other material getting through,” he said.
“We can only replace one at a time because we have to keep the flow going, and we need to go in and isolate each channel to create a safe working space. And we can only do that for a four-hour period between 2am and 6am. There are a lot of logistics like that to keep the plant running while we upgrade it.”
This requires meticulous alignment and coordination between the 300 people working on the project across the Alliance, including approximately 150 engineers, with key contributions from Clough and Jacobs.
Redefining wastewater as a critical resource
Woodman Point’s upgrade is a working example of how essential infrastructure can evolve to meet the intersecting challenges of climate change, population growth and energy insecurity.
“We’ve rebranded our wastewater treatment plants. They’re now called water resource recovery facilities – and that’s not just spin. It reflects a real shift in how we see wastewater: as the first step in a cyclical system,” said Upton.
This philosophy underpins every aspect of the Woodman Point upgrade, from the shift to energy self-generation to the recovery of biosolids for agriculture, he said. It’s a model for how infrastructure can support sustainability when processes are designed to work with nature, not against it.
“We’re giving nature a bit of a helping hand. That’s what wastewater treatment really is – supporting natural cycles, just more efficiently.”
Learn more about Webuild’s innovative and sustainable infrastructure development projects by visiting our website.
