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

污水处理厂越来越多地受到极端天气的挑战。在不断变化的气候中，这样的事件只会变得更加频繁和激烈。与此同时，美国大部分污水处理基础设施的设计寿命已过或接近尾声。许多新的处理技术已经被提出，以提高这些老化处理设施的可持续性和有效性。拟议的研究重点是应对在服务需求日益增加的情况下提高可持续性的挑战。这将通过解决三个具体目标来实现。首先，研究人员将确定使污水处理厂更能适应极端天气的因素。目标将确定哪些技术可以提高复原力、可持续性和治疗性能。最终目标将是建立模型，以便于决定在哪里投资于基础设施改善，以最大限度地提高弹性。这项研究的成功完成将对行业和社会产生广泛的影响。这些措施包括改善处理性能，减少极端天气后工厂停工时间，以及减少对过度设计的基础设施的需求。对社会的其他好处包括公共健康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，该项目将为代表不足的群体创造机会，在主要城市地区解决与国家相关的工程挑战，并通过实践培训直接与行业和公用事业接触。拟议的工作促进了与污水处理厂(WWTP)恢复能力相关的基础工程和科学。拟议研究的目标是：i)量化德克萨斯州休斯敦和华盛顿特区一套完整规模的污水处理厂对潮湿天气事件的复原力，并确定复原力系统的特征；ii)使用建模和中试研究来量化新兴技术的复原力；以及iii)评估升级单个污水处理站对社区范围复原力的影响，作为规模、配置和连接的函数。恢复能力的衡量标准既考虑了性能下降的幅度，也考虑了恢复性能的时间。将对污水处理厂进行全面抽样，以量化一系列系统的弹性指标，并将对新出现的基于生物膜的处理策略进行中试测试，以了解工艺配置和生物膜几何形状如何影响弹性。先验的，基于生物膜的系统预计对潮湿天气事件更具弹性，因为进行处理的微生物是固定的，与大多数城市污水处理厂普遍存在的悬浮生长系统相比，不容易被“冲走”。试点和全面复原力评估的结果将被用作系统一级模型的输入，以确定污水处理厂流程强化的候选者，以提高整个社区的复原力。这项拟议的研究首次对一系列污水处理厂的复原力进行了定量评估。这项研究的成功完成将为将弹性指标纳入未来污水基础设施的设计、评估和规划奠定基础，以确保工艺强化的进步不会以牺牲工艺弹性为代价。所获得的见解将为提高废水基础设施在面对气候变化时的应变能力提供最佳实践。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.