Energy efficiency continues to be an issue in wastewater treatment. Since the invention of the activated sludge process in the early 1900s there has been progress in the understanding of activated sludge processes, resulting in improvements in the water quality being produced by sewage treatment works. But the use of energy has shown remarkably little improvement despite a century of usage.
The German government is now funding a new research project looking at energy efficiency over the whole sewage works, based on computer modelling of likely benefits, improvements to instrumentation, improved data collection and organisation, and the use exploration of alternative control approaches based on neural networks and fuzzy control. The partners for this project are RISA GmbH, University of Applied Sciences Cologne, 3s Sensor Systems Solutions GbR, EnviaTec GmbH, Dow (Central Germany) GmbH, GKW Bitterfeld Wolfen GmbH, and WRc.
WRc's role in the project is extending the wastewater treatment dynamic modelling package (STOAT) to include better modelling of energy and control systems, to allow investigating the proposed sensor systems and control algorithms before implementation at the sewage works. Specifically, the STOAT package will be enhanced for calculating the gas and electricity production through CHP, anaerobic digestion, gas storage and flaring, coupling the combined heat and power (CHP) electrical generation with electrical demand from aeration systems and other potential electrical demands, and provision of fuzzy control algorithms.
For further information please contact Jeremy Dudley, tel: +44 (0) 1793 865049.