Anaerobic digestion, RNG, and industrial wastewater treatment plants have hundreds of technology and equipment options to choose from. Equipment decisions are high-cost and hard to unwind. How do you know which is the right fit for your system, your business, and your budget?
Even with experience, teams don’t always have the time or depth of expertise to:
- Explore all viable options,
- Address complex or uncommon technical issues, or
- Confidently assume the full risk of selecting high‑value technology and equipment.
Why work with Azura?
Before you get lost in online searches, sorting through vendor marketing materials, or long conversations with AI, talk to the experts who understand how this equipment performs in real-world applications. Azura brings 35+ years of hands-on experience, delivering independent, actionable advice that will get your anaerobic digester, RNG, or industrial wastewater project off to the right start.
Best Available Technology Selection Process
Azura has established a structured seven-step process to guide clients through selecting the best available technology (BAT) that meets their success criteria; while building the supporting evidence to justify those decisions to stakeholders. Watch the video, or read the list below, to get an idea of how our process works.
1. Define Success Criteria: Identify the main business, operational, and regulatory success criteria.
2. Build Long List: Review all possible categories of technology and equipment that could be used for the project.
3. Filter to Medium List: Quickly eliminate all equipment that clearly does not meet the success criteria.
4. Evaluate the medium list for:
- Technical risks (performance, sensitivity to abnormal conditions, reliability, etc.
- Commercial risks (general capital and operating costs, vendor assumptions, energy, etc.)
- Operational risks (maintainability, staffing needs, availability of parts, etc.)
- Adoption risks (technology maturity, reference installations, etc.)
- Governance risk (ability to defend selection to boards, regulators, and investors)
5. Workshop to Short List: In a workshop, guide the client through the medium list of options and reduce the list to the top 3 options for deeper investigation.
- Clarify that all options that are presented meet the success criteria
- Summarize analysis of each option, highlighting how it would affect success criteria
6. Gather vendor quotes for the top 3 options.
7. Finalize selection with a short meeting discussing new information on the top 3 options.
Deliverables from BAT Selection Process
This process improves internal alignment by clearly distinguishing preferred, viable, and non-viable options, while creating a documented decision record that reduces the need to revisit past decisions as teams change.
At the end of this process, clients will receive:
- A report summarizing the success criteria, shortlist, and final decision with justification,
- An options matrix that outlines all the technology and equipment, our analysis, and reasoning for rejection, and
- A plan for next steps of the project.
When is the best time for BAT selection?
This process is designed for early-to-mid project planning, when there is enough information to rule out poor-fit options but not enough to fully optimize the final selection. To avoid misalignment later, stakeholders should agree on the success criteria early, before moving onto equipment selection.
Azura’s Best Available Technology selection process is ideal for situations where:
- Success criteria are established and agreed upon by all stakeholders,
- Major process steps are mostly firm, but the technology or equipment types are not,
- There are major developments in regulations or technology, and
- Technical outcomes and/or performance targets are mostly firm.