New software for wastewater treatment
Wastewater treatment plants face many challenges, including nutrient recycling and recovery, micropollutant removal, energy recovery and minimising greenhouse gas formation. As such, new approaches to operating such facilities are needed. An EU-funded collaboration involving Australia, Denmark, South Africa, Sweden and the International Water Association (IWA) recently made significant advances in this regard. The collaboration, called PROTEUS (New process models to simulate, benchmark and control urban wastewater treatment systems), developed and modelled technological solutions to wastewater treatment challenges. The main outcome of the research is a software package that can be used as a decision-support tool to determine the best solution for specific treatment plants. This prototype software will be freely distributed to water professionals, process managers and environmental engineers. Also publically available are several journal publications and conference proceedings generated as a result of the project's research efforts. PROTEUS has thus contributed to better simulation, benchmarking and control of urban wastewater treatment systems.
