The proposed work aims to develop a process to treat wastewater in a more sustainable manner, involving anaerobic digestion, membrane technology and microalgae bioreactor.  The proposed process uses solar membrane distillation to reduce the volume and increase the temperature of the influent wastewater.  Organic carbon would then be converted to methane in a thermophilic anaerobic MBR.  A microalgae bioreactor polishes up the anaerobic effluent by removing the nutrients (N and P) present in the wastewater.  The algal biomass is then anaerobically digested for sustainable waste management.  The overall outcome is to produce a consistent effluent stream, bioenergy in the form of gas, and reduced waste (sludge) production for the wastewater treatment process.

Climate change poses many challenges: meeting energy needs, supplying clean water and reduction in cooling energy due to buildings in the equator requiring cooling. To study the feasibility of meeting all these needs, Pulau Ubin is chosen. There is neither PUB water supply nor electrical power but there are deep quarries with plenty of water. Republic Polytechnic has adopted one of the disused quarries for outdoor aquatic training. At this site, there is neither clean drinking water nor electricity but there is a building, i.e. the kayak shed which can be very warm during the mid afternoon till evening. This is excellent for our testing purposes to provide energy, clean water and to cool building. The objectives are: 1) to determine how much cooling of the shed can be achieved by pumping the cool water up from deep depths using solar submersible pump and whether it is energy efficient to do so; 2) to determine whether the warmed water after cooling the shed can increase the rate of clean drinking water generation via solar distillation; 3) provide energy via photovoltaic panels and by cooling two units on the quarry and one as a control to quantify the efficiencies of cooled vs normal temperature panels.