GOALI: Collaborative Research: Advancing wastewater treatment resiliency and sustainability goals in the face of climate change

目标：合作研究：面对气候变化，提高废水处理的弹性和可持续性目标

• 批准号: 1931937
• 负责人: Patrick Ymele-Leki
• 金额: $ 11.38万
• 依托单位: Howard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-08-15 至 2023-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1931937&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: GOALI; Collaborative; Research; Advancing; wastewater

Wastewater treatment plants are increasingly challenged by extreme weather. Such events will only become more frequent and intense in a changing climate. At the same time, much of the Nation's wastewater infrastructure is past or near the end of its design life. Many new treatment technologies have been proposed to enhance the sustainability and efficacy of these aging treatment facilities. The proposed research is focused on addressing the challenge of improving sustainability in the face of increasing demands on service. This will be achieved by addressing three specific objects. First, researchers will identify factors that make wastewater treatment plants more resilient to extreme weather. The objective will determine which technologies can improve resiliency, sustainability, and treatment performance. The final objective will be to build models to facilitate decisions on where to invest in infrastructure improvement to maximize resiliency. Successful completion of this research will have broad impacts on industry and society. These include improving treatment performance, reducing plant downtime following extreme weather, and reducing the need for overdesigned infrastructure. Added benefits to society include potential improvements in public health and reductions in economic and environmental costs associated with sewage pollution. In addition, the project will create opportunities for underrepresented groups to work on nationally relevant engineering challenges in major urban areas and engage directly with industry and utilities via hands-on training. The proposed work advances fundamental engineering and science related to resiliency of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The objectives of the proposed research are to: i) quantify the resiliency of a suite of full-scale WWTPs in Houston, TX and Washington, DC to wet weather events and identify features of a resilient system; ii) quantify the resiliency of emerging technologies using modeling and pilot-scale studies; and iii) evaluate the impact of upgrading individual WWTPs on community-wide resiliency as a function of scale, configuration, and connectivity. Measures of resiliency account for both the magnitude of performance reduction and the time to recover performance. Full-scale WWTP sampling will be performed to quantify resiliency metrics for a range of systems, and pilot-scale testing of emerging biofilm-based treatment strategies will be performed to understand how process configuration and biofilm geometry impacts resiliency. A priori, biofilm-based systems are expected to be more resilient to wet weather events because the microbes carrying out the treatment are immobilized and not prone to "wash out" compared to suspended-growth systems ubiquitous to most urban WWTPs. Results from the pilot- and full-scale resiliency assessments will be used as input to a systems-level model to identify candidates for WWTP process intensification to enhance community-wide resiliency. The proposed research is the first to perform a quantitative assessment of resiliency for a range of WWTPs. Successful completion of this research will lay the foundation for incorporating resiliency metrics in the design, evaluation, and planning of future wastewater infrastructure to ensure that advances in process intensification do not come at the expense of process resiliency. Insights gained will inform best practices for the enhancement of wastewater infrastructure resiliency in the face of climate change.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

废水处理厂越来越受到极端天气的挑战。这种事件只会在不断变化的气候下变得更加频繁和强烈。同时，美国大部分废水基础设施已经过去或接近其设计寿命的尽头。已经提出了许多新的治疗技术来增强这些老化治疗设施的可持续性和功效。拟议的研究重点是应对面对不断增长的服务需求而提高可持续性的挑战。这将通过解决三个特定对象来实现。首先，研究人员将确定使废水处理厂对极端天气更具韧性的因素。该目标将确定哪些技术可以提高弹性，可持续性和治疗绩效。最终的目标是建立模型，以促进有关在基础设施改进的何处投资以最大化弹性的决策。这项研究的成功完成将对工业和社会产生广泛的影响。这些包括改善治疗性能，减少极端天气后的停机时间，并减少对过度设计的基础设施的需求。对社会的增加的好处包括公共卫生的潜在改善以及与污水污染相关的经济和环境成本的减少。此外，该项目将为代表性不足的团体创造机会，以在主要城市地区面临国家相关的工程挑战，并通过动手培训直接与行业和公用事业互动。拟议的工作推进了与废水处理厂（WWTPS）弹性有关的基本工程和科学。拟议的研究的目标是：i）量化德克萨斯州休斯敦和华盛顿特区的一套全尺度WWTP的弹性，以进行潮湿的天气事件，并确定弹性系统的特征； ii）使用建模和试验规模研究量化新兴技术的弹性；和iii）评估升级单个WWTP对社区范围弹性的影响，该影响是规模，配置和连接性的函数。弹性的度量既是降低性能的幅度和恢复性能的时间。将进行全面的WWTP采样，以量化一系列系统的弹性指标，并将执行基于生物膜的治疗策略的试验尺度测试，以了解过程构型和生物膜几年如何影响弹性。与大多数城市WWTPS无处不在的悬浮生长系统相比，进行治疗的微生物被固定在潮湿的天气事件上，因此预计基于生物膜的系统对潮湿的天气事件更具弹性。试点和全尺度弹性评估的结果将用作系统级模型的输入，以确定WWTP流程加强候选者，以提高社区范围的弹性。拟议的研究是第一个对一系列WWTP的弹性进行定量评估的研究。这项研究的成功完成将为将未来废水基础设施的设计，评估和计划纳入设计，评估和计划，以确保过程强化的进步不会以过程弹性为代价。在面对气候变化时，获得的见解将为增强废水基础设施弹性增强的最佳实践提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的智力优点和更广泛影响的评估来评估的审查标准。