Isle shares key takeaways from the 2026 IWA World conference on Anaerobic Digestion in Valencia, bioplastics, AI-driven digesters, and the shift beyond biogas
What We Learned at the IWA World Conference on Anaerobic Digestion
Beyond Biogas: What We Learned at the IWA World Conference on Anaerobic Digestion
Isle’s Eleonora Paissoni and Victoria Westphalen attended the 19th IWA World Conference on Anaerobic Digestion in Valencia, organised by Universitat de València, held under the theme “Fueling Sustainability”. The conference drew more than 700 attendees from over 50 countries, spanning academia, industry, and policy.
The opening ceremony set the tone: anaerobic digestion (AD) is no longer seen only as a treatment process. It’s increasingly framed as a step in a broader bio-refinery, one that supports the circular economy and resource recovery across the water sector.
Why We Were There
Isle leads Exploitation & Innovation Management in several EU-funded projects helping accelerate the market uptake of the innovative solutions developed within them. e presented two posters reflecting our involvement on them:::
- Fuels-C – Developing an Integrated platform of cost and energy efficient technologies, including bioelectrochemical system (BES)-assisted AD, to convert sustainable biogenic residues, such as sewage sludge, and biogenic CO2 into advanced liquid and gaseous biofuels (ammonia, methane, ethanol and formic acid)(Horizon Europe GA 101147442, UKRI 10111560).
- CircSyst – Testing large scale-circular solutions across three value chains: water, biowaste and packaging. The two biowaste demonstrators focus on extracting valuable compounds from different biowaste streams, including the recovery of nutrients, biogas and PHA from sewage sludge. (Horizon Europe GA 101135505, UKRI 10115627).
The Shift: From Producing Biogas to innovative pathways to valorise it
A clear thread ran through the conference: biogas is no longer the endpoint. Research and industry are increasingly focused on what comes after biogas is produced: biomethane, bioplastics, and other high-value bioproducts.
This isn’t a departure from biogas production so much as an additional step, driven largely by circular economy regulations and market demand for bioproducts.
One of the more interesting themes was the volume of research on producing biodegradable plastics (PHAs) directly by using biomethane as a carbon source, alongside other bioproducts such as ectoine.
AI and Digital Twins Are Entering the Digester
Digital twins and AI-driven process optimization featured prominently, a shift from even a few years ago, when this wasn’t part of the conversation. Most of this work is aimed at helping AD operate more efficiently, and optimise energy production, by combining AD models with energy models.
A Genuinely Global Conversation
With attendees from over 50 countries, sessions surfaced how differently AD performs depending on context. Temperature is a major variable: operators in warmer climates face different maintenance and infrastructure challenges than those in cooler regions like the UK, where lower temperatures demand closer operational attention. The exchange of experience across countries was, by attendees’ own account, one of the most valuable parts of the event.
A Highlight Worth Sharing
One of the standout keynotes, given by Prof Lutgarde Raskin of Yale University, drew a direct comparison between industrial AD reactors and the digestive systems of ruminants, using the structure of a cow’s stomach as a model for optimizing bioreactor design. It’s a reminder that some of the best engineering insight still comes from biology and natural environments.