CONCEIVING WASTEWATER TREATMENT IN 2020
Energetic, environmental and economic challenges (ES1202)
COST

WG4. Process integration

Objectives

Plant-wide analysis, plant-wide control, cost analysis, overall impact assessment, social acceptance and decision support systems (DSS) focusing on urban wastewater. 

Deliverables

The main outcomes of WG4 will be two software packages that will summarize some of the knowledge developed in WG1, WG2 and WG3. These two software packages will be:

  1. A Decision Support System (DSS) to select alternatives for WWTP

  2. A Benchmark Simulation Protocol to compare control / operational strategies in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP).

These deliverables will start from tools developed previously: In case of DSS, the Novedar-Consolider project (Spanish Government CSD2007-00055) and with respect to the Benchmark Simulation Protocol, the already constructed and available code for the BSM family-products will be the selected platform developed in the COST ACTION 624. In both cases, these two systems will incorporate environmental impact assessment (using LCA), economics and social acceptance.

When it comes to model development, in the DSS, where the main focus will be developing process flow diagrams, steady state models will be sufficient. On the other hand, dynamic models are necessary to evaluate control strategies because detailed (loads / process) variations will be investigated. New process models will have to be developed in order to correctly describe the new treatment /recovery objectives (formation of N2O, CO2 and CH4 emissions, biological phosphorus removal, micropollutants, etc.). In comparison of biological processes, the role of physico-chemistry in the whole activated sludge models is poorly described. The latter has resulted to be really important in order to correctly study the different intended processes e.g. phosphorus recovery

The wastewater treatment plant of the 2020 will need a change of paradigm. Hence, the traditional evaluation criteria will have to be extended in order to cover the new treated requirements. The different LCA impact categories should be included within the evaluation procedures (ozone depletion, eco-toxicity, greenhouse gases emissions, eutrophication).

The validation of the developed tools will be done in the framework of the COST action Water 2020.

The list of deliverables is completed with the following:

  1. Album of WG4 members

  2. Newsletter

  3. Special session meetings at conferences (IWA- ICA, Narbonne 2013 // IWA- WWC, Lisbon 2014)

  4. Short term scientific missions (STSM)

  5. Joint papers (we have experience from other COST actions)

  6. New projects

 

Meetings:

WG4 Meeting, Ghent (Belgium) 2014

Event-Date: 
Thursday, November 20, 2014 to Friday, November 21, 2014

 

Marie-Noëlle Pons, chair of WG4, welcomes everyone and acknowledges Eveline Volcke for organizing the event.
Then, the different participants were distributed in 4 different sub‐groups for discussions and better interactions:

WG4 Meeting (Narbonne-France) 2013

Event-Date: 
Monday, September 16, 2013 to Tuesday, September 17, 2013

The goal of the meeting, was to discuss in more detail the points coming out of the main conclusions drawn from our first meeting in Alexandropoulis, namely a thorough definition of the BSM2 adds on and discussion about the contents and way to achieve the DSS, both in static and dynamic modes.

 

Monday Sept 16 : 15:00 to 17 :30

- BSM2 adds on: description of available or currently developed adds-on in terms of processes, biomodels and GHG (Ulf Jeppsson & Xavier Flores-Alsina IEA, Lund University, Sweden)