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

污水处理厂日益受到极端天气的挑战。在不断变化的气候下，这类事件只会变得更加频繁和激烈。与此同时，美国的大部分污水处理基础设施已经超过或接近其设计寿命。人们提出了许多新的处理技术来提高这些老化处理设施的可持续性和有效性。拟议的研究侧重于解决在面对日益增长的服务需求时提高可持续性的挑战。这将通过处理三个具体对象来实现。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。目标是确定哪些技术可以提高弹性、可持续性和处理性能。最终目标将是建立模型，以促进在何处投资基础设施改进以最大限度地提高弹性的决策。这项研究的成功完成将对行业和社会产生广泛的影响。这些措施包括提高处理性能，减少极端天气后工厂的停机时间，以及减少对过度设计的基础设施的需求。对社会的额外好处包括可能改善公共卫生和减少与污水污染有关的经济和环境成本。此外，该项目还将为代表性不足的群体创造机会，让他们在主要城市地区从事与国家相关的工程挑战，并通过实践培训直接与工业和公用事业公司接触。提出的工作推进了与污水处理厂（WWTPs）弹性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顿和华盛顿特区一套全尺寸污水处理厂对潮湿天气事件的弹性，并确定弹性系统的特征；Ii)利用建模和中试规模研究量化新兴技术的弹性；iii)根据规模、配置和连通性评估升级单个污水处理厂对整个社区弹性的影响。弹性度量既考虑了性能下降的幅度，也考虑了恢复性能所需的时间。将进行全面的污水处理厂采样，以量化一系列系统的回弹性指标，并对新兴的基于生物膜的处理策略进行中试，以了解工艺配置和生物膜几何形状如何影响回弹性。首先，基于生物膜的系统预计对潮湿的天气事件更有弹性，因为与大多数城市污水处理厂普遍存在的悬浮生长系统相比，进行处理的微生物是固定的，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级模型的输入，以确定污水处理厂过程强化的候选项目，以增强整个社区的复原力。拟议的研究是第一次对一系列污水处理厂的弹性进行定量评估。这项研究的成功完成将为将弹性指标纳入未来废水基础设施的设计、评估和规划奠定基础，以确保过程强化的进步不会以过程弹性为代价。所获得的见解将为面对气候变化增强废水基础设施弹性的最佳实践提供参考。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.