Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WISEFLOW (Whole-plant Assessment of Innovative, Sustainable and Energy-efficient Future Layouts of Wastewater Treatment Plants)
Reporting period: 2019-04-01 to 2021-03-31
Clean water and sanitation, the outcomes of wastewater treatment, are the pillars of sustainable development and influences, to various extents, our health, work and education, among others. The Sustainable Development Goals and EU’s Water Framework Directive both recognize environmental technologies as means of implementing their targets.
It is well-known that current wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) designs, which generally uses conventional technologies, suffer from a large energy consumption, space requirements and sludge production. In the near future, it is also expected that pollutant loads will increase, especially in urban areas, combined with more stringent effluent quality limits. All these challenges need to be simultaneously addressed at once. However, there is a limit to how much operational and control strategies for conventional WWTPs can do to resolve these challenges. Over the past 20 years, some distinct technological innovations have been made in the field of wastewater treatment, demonstrating that a better effluent quality and sustainability can go hand in hand, and may even be combined with reduced investment and operating costs. The integration of these novel technologies within WWTP schemes already applied in practice as well as those put forward for the future, offers promising perspectives in addressing the above-mentioned current and future WWTP challenges.
The main scientific objective of the WISEFLOW project was to develop innovative wastewater treatment process layouts, comprised of conventional and novel unit processes. These new process layouts were evaluated by comparing their performance with respect to a conventional activated sludge-based WWTP. The comparison was performed using a set of evaluation criteria which takes into account effluent quality, operational costs, system compactness, energy-efficiency, resource recovery, among others.
It is well-known that current wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) designs, which generally uses conventional technologies, suffer from a large energy consumption, space requirements and sludge production. In the near future, it is also expected that pollutant loads will increase, especially in urban areas, combined with more stringent effluent quality limits. All these challenges need to be simultaneously addressed at once. However, there is a limit to how much operational and control strategies for conventional WWTPs can do to resolve these challenges. Over the past 20 years, some distinct technological innovations have been made in the field of wastewater treatment, demonstrating that a better effluent quality and sustainability can go hand in hand, and may even be combined with reduced investment and operating costs. The integration of these novel technologies within WWTP schemes already applied in practice as well as those put forward for the future, offers promising perspectives in addressing the above-mentioned current and future WWTP challenges.
The main scientific objective of the WISEFLOW project was to develop innovative wastewater treatment process layouts, comprised of conventional and novel unit processes. These new process layouts were evaluated by comparing their performance with respect to a conventional activated sludge-based WWTP. The comparison was performed using a set of evaluation criteria which takes into account effluent quality, operational costs, system compactness, energy-efficiency, resource recovery, among others.
The work performed during the fellowship consists of 8 Work Packages (WPs), the first four of which are scientific in nature.
WP1 focused on modelling of conventional and novel unit process technologies and their integration in innovative schemes. This WP resulted in 3 journal papers and 2 conference papers. WP2 focused on data, in particular on measurement campaigns and use of data for model calibration and validation. This WP resulted in 1 journal paper (with 1 additional in preparation) and 2 conference papers. WP3 focused on process optimization, in preparation for WP4 which focused on the development of evaluation criteria for comparison of optimized layouts and multi-criteria objective analysis. WP4 resulted in 1 journal paper.
WP5 is related to communication and dissemination of results. The fellow attended and presented at 4 international conferences, where she was also a scientific committee member in 2 of those conferences. She participated in 2 open day events at Ghent University, the host institute, and was also invited as guest speaker on 2 occasions. The fellow spent 3 months of secondment (WP6) at IRSTEA (French National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture, now INRAE). In order to further improve her interpersonal skills (WP7) she actively joined in 10 training programmes organized at the host institute, such as leadership programme, teacher training and time management. WP8 tackled the management of the project.
WP1 focused on modelling of conventional and novel unit process technologies and their integration in innovative schemes. This WP resulted in 3 journal papers and 2 conference papers. WP2 focused on data, in particular on measurement campaigns and use of data for model calibration and validation. This WP resulted in 1 journal paper (with 1 additional in preparation) and 2 conference papers. WP3 focused on process optimization, in preparation for WP4 which focused on the development of evaluation criteria for comparison of optimized layouts and multi-criteria objective analysis. WP4 resulted in 1 journal paper.
WP5 is related to communication and dissemination of results. The fellow attended and presented at 4 international conferences, where she was also a scientific committee member in 2 of those conferences. She participated in 2 open day events at Ghent University, the host institute, and was also invited as guest speaker on 2 occasions. The fellow spent 3 months of secondment (WP6) at IRSTEA (French National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture, now INRAE). In order to further improve her interpersonal skills (WP7) she actively joined in 10 training programmes organized at the host institute, such as leadership programme, teacher training and time management. WP8 tackled the management of the project.
The WISEFLOW project looked beyond conventional technologies and systems of wastewater treatment. Commonly, operational and control strategies are developed in order to improve wastewater treatment plant operations. However, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), currently and in the future, will be faced with several challenges all at once and there is a limit to how much these operational and control strategies can address these often-times conflicting challenges.
This project has demonstrated that integrating both conventional and novel technologies in a smart and innovative way has the potential to simultaneously address the challenges such as load increases due to population growth and urbanization, stricter effluent quality limits, space limitations for building new plants, energy-efficiency and resource scarcity.
The field of wastewater treatment is still largely conservative. Although research has frequently pushed the boundaries, the uptake of new knowledge into practice lags behind. With the combination of model-based analysis and measurement data from actual installations performed in this work, it is aspired that confidence of researchers and practitioners in the potential of these new layouts will raise. Then, this may attract further studies which will accelerate the transfer of knowledge into practice.
This project has demonstrated that integrating both conventional and novel technologies in a smart and innovative way has the potential to simultaneously address the challenges such as load increases due to population growth and urbanization, stricter effluent quality limits, space limitations for building new plants, energy-efficiency and resource scarcity.
The field of wastewater treatment is still largely conservative. Although research has frequently pushed the boundaries, the uptake of new knowledge into practice lags behind. With the combination of model-based analysis and measurement data from actual installations performed in this work, it is aspired that confidence of researchers and practitioners in the potential of these new layouts will raise. Then, this may attract further studies which will accelerate the transfer of knowledge into practice.