scholarly journals Sustainable Energy Management Benchmark at Wastewater Treatment Plant

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12885
Author(s):  
Andrey Kiselev ◽  
Elena Magaril ◽  
Deborah Panepinto ◽  
Elena Cristina Rada ◽  
Marco Ravina ◽  
...  

Urban wastewater effluents bring large amounts of nutrients, organic matter, and organic microcontaminants into freshwater ecosystems. Ensuring the quality of wastewater treatment (WWT) is one of the main challenges facing the management of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). However, achievement of high-quality standards leads towards significant energy consumption: usually the more intensive WWT process requires additional energies. Energy efficiency at WWTP is actual mainstream on the current sustainable development agenda. The WWTP processes and methods can be considered from the standpoint of material and energy flows according to circular economy paradigm, which offers great possibilities to reuse waste originating from WWT in order to receive renewable energy. The correlation between energy and quality issues to evaluate WWTP efficiency is of a great scientific and practical interest. The main goal of the paper is to check the dependency between these two main issues in WWTP management—WWT quality and energy efficiency—and to determine possible limits of such relation. The municipal sewerage system of Ekaterinburg, Russia was studied within this paper. The total length of centralized sewerage system in Ekaterinburg is over 1500 km of pipes within two main sewerage basins: northern and southern. The methodological framework for the current research consisted of three steps: (i) WWT quality evaluation, (ii) energy efficiency evaluation, and (iii) WWTP Quality/Energy (Q/E) efficiency dependency matrix. For the purpose of research, authors investigated the 2015–2018 period. The results showed that the outputs correlate with the technical conditions of WWTPs and the implementation of the best available techniques (BATs): most of the northern WWTP values are referred to the green zone (good rank), while the southern WWTP values are situated generally in the orange zone (unsatisfactory rank). The proposed methodological approach for Q/E dependency of WWT process creates a strong but simple tool for managers to evaluate the current success of the operation of WWTP and progress towards circular economy practices implementation.

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
pp. 1260-1262
Author(s):  
Stela Sefa ◽  
Tania Floqi ◽  
Julian Sefa

The wastewater treatment plant serving the city of Durres, which is the second most populous city of Albania, employs the tertiary advanced wastewater treatment method and engages in biogas production to achieve energy efficiency. In order to empirically evaluate the plant’s energy efficiency realization, the total biogas produced and converted to electricity for daily consumption was measured during a three years period (2016 - 2018). The highest electricity produced was recorded in 2016, with a daily average of 844kWh compared to 550kWh and 370kWh in 2017 and 2018, respectively. So that the plant meets proper criteria to classify as an energy-efficient entity, 30.0 percent of its electricity consumption must be derived from biogas. Converted in kWh, the plant should generate 2,975 kWh/day. Based on the biomass and energy values measured during the study period, it is concluded that electricity supplied from biogas met 6.0 percent of the plant’s energy requirements, or one fifth of the energy-efficiency target. While the plant was successful in carrying out the full waste-to-energy production process, the electricity supplied from biogas was very low and did not fulfil the plant’s self-energy requirements.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 2764
Author(s):  
Argyro Plevri ◽  
Klio Monokrousou ◽  
Christos Makropoulos ◽  
Christos Lioumis ◽  
Nikolaos Tazes ◽  
...  

Water reuse and recycling is gaining momentum as a way to improve the circularity of cities, while recognizing the central role of water within a circular economy (CE) context. However, such interventions often depend on the location of wastewater treatment plants and the treatment technologies installed in their premises, while relying on an expensive piped network to ensure that treated wastewater gets transported from the treatment plant to the point of demand. Thus, the penetration level of treated wastewater as a source of non-potable supply in dense urban environments is limited. This paper focuses on the demonstration of a sewer mining (SM) unit as a source of treated wastewater, as part of a larger and more holistic configuration that examines all three ‘streams’ associated with water in CE: water, energy and materials. The application area is the Athens Plant Nursery, in the (water stressed) city of Athens, Greece. SM technology is in fact a mobile wastewater treatment unit in containers able to extract wastewater from local sewers, treat it directly and reuse at the point of demand even in urban environments with limited space. The unit consists of a membrane bioreactor unit (MBR) and a UV disinfection unit and produces high quality reclaimed water for irrigation and also for aquifer recharge during the winter. Furthermore, a short overview of the integrated nutrient and energy recovery subsystem is presented in order to conceptualise the holistic approach and circularity of the whole configuration. The SM technology demonstrates flexibility, scalability and replicability, which are important characteristics for innovation uptake within the emerging CE context and market.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 117862212093585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karim M Morsy ◽  
Mohamed K Mostafa ◽  
Khaled Z Abdalla ◽  
Mona M Galal

Although significant progress has been achieved in the field of environmental impact assessment in many engineering disciplines, the impact of wastewater treatment plants has not yet been well integrated. In light of this remarkable scientific progress, the outputs of the plants as treated water and clean sludge have become potential sources of irrigation and energy, not a waste. The aim of this study is to assess the environmental impacts of upgrading the wastewater treatment plants from primary to secondary treatment. The Lifecycle Assessment Framework (ISO 14040 and 14044) was applied using GaBi Software. Abu Rawash wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) has been taken as a case study. Two scenarios were studied, Scenario 1 is the current situation of the WWTP using the primary treatment units and Scenario 2 is upgrading the WWTP by adding secondary treatment units. The study highlighted the influence and cumulative impact of upgrading all the primary WWTPs in Egypt to secondary treatment. With the high amount of energy consumed in the aeration process, energy recovery methods were proposed to boost the circular economy concept in Abu Rawash WWTP in order to achieve optimal results from environmental and economic perspectives.


2016 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 404-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Panepinto ◽  
Silvia Fiore ◽  
Mariantonia Zappone ◽  
Giuseppe Genon ◽  
Lorenza Meucci

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr M. Bugajski ◽  
Grzegorz Kaczor ◽  
Krzysztof Chmielowski

AbstractThe paper analyzes the effect of precipitation water that inflowing to sanitary sewage system as accidental water on the changes in the total amount of treated sewage. The effects of accidental water supply on the total amount of sewage inflowing to treatment plant were analyzed based on mean daily amounts from the investigated periods and mean daily amounts from incidental supplies. The study was conducted in the years 2010–2015. Six characteristic research periods were identified (one per each calendar year), when the amount of sewage in the sanitary sewage system was greater than during dry weather. The analysis of changes in the amount of sewage supplied to the sewerage system in the six investigated periods revealed that the accidental water constituted from 26.8% to 48.4% of total sewage inflowing to the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). In exceptional situations, during intense rains, the share of precipitation water in the sewerage system would increase up to 75%. Then, the rainwater inflowing the sewerage system caused hydraulic overloading of the WWTP by exceeding its maximum design supply.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 402-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cao Yeshi ◽  
Lau Choon Leng ◽  
Lin Li ◽  
Lee Yingjie ◽  
Lee Kah Seng ◽  
...  

This paper presents the results of a measured data-based mass flow and balance study in UluPandan Water Reclamation Plant (WRP), the second largest municipal wastewater treatment plant in Singapore. The results are benchmarked against the Strass wastewater treatment plant in Austria, which has achieved energy self-efficiency. The gaps between the two plants have been identified and areas for process improvement in UluPandan WRP, especially those related to energy efficiency, have been proposed. This case study demonstrates that mass flow and balance is an effective tool in improving process performance and the energy efficiency of a municipal wastewater treatment plant.


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