Wastewater Treatment Monitoring and Advisory System

Project Information

WaMoS

Grant agreement ID: 868462

DOI

10.3030/868462

Project closed

EC signature date 26 April 2019

Start date 1 May 2019

End date 31 October 2019

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

BIA PODJETJE ZA LABORATORIJSKO IN P
Slovenia

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WaMoS (Wastewater Treatment Monitoring and Advisory System)

Reporting period: 2019-05-01 to 2019-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Action context: The biggest pain point of WaMoS customers, i.e. small and medium size Urban Waste Water Treatment Plants (UWWTP - 18.8423 in EU), is that state-of-the-art of commercially available technological solutions for real-time and online monitoring of aerobic biological nutrient removal (BNR), responsible for cleaning of organic pollutants from wastewater, does not meet the demands of the market. Lack of suitable solutions forces operators of UWWTPs to »drive blind« in critical situations. This often results in discharge of pollutants into receiving rivers with estimated environmental cost of 300 million EUR per year in EU.

Objectives: WaMoS is affordable online, real-time, monitoring, diagnostic, alarming and advisory system for monitoring BNR process status, designed as Platform as a Sevice (PaaS). Our Key enabling technology is industrial biotechnology supported by Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML), Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain technologies. It can completely remove risks of pollution due to problems with BNR process and as such it is an industry gamechanger. Our target is 80% reduction of unwanted biological treatment events during operation of small and medium size UWWTPs. Our customers are reponsible for cleaning waste water of 150 million inhabitants of European Union.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Work performed: We organised international event Activated Sludge 2019 in June 2019 to improve our microbiological knowledge and understanding of customers problems in daily operation. We had in-depth interviews with influencing professors in the fields of activated sludge microbiology, WWTP design and operation, sensorics and data processing in water industry. We tested innovative water sensors and suitability of machine learning for water systems fingerprinting and early warning. Freedom to operate and IP protection were analysed.

Main results:
• Operators of UWWTPs can have a lot of problems due to poor insight into the activated sludge process and lack of knowledge.
• There is currently no suitable low-cost multiparametric sensor node on the market suitable for our purpose.
• Time is now for realtime process measurement and control in small & midsize UWWTPs
• Combined hardware and software systems can be patented also in EU. IP protection of WaMoS with low-cost multiparametric sensor node is possible.
• Further financing must be secured with combination of EIC Accelerator Pilot (or similar) funding and private investors.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

For Phase 1 of SME Instrument, end result of the project is Feasibility Study, which is confidential.

Illustration of core functions and benefits of WaMoS