DOES DIVERSITY IMPROVE THE STABILITY OF EXTENSIVE WASTEWATER TREATMENT SYSTEMS UNDER CHANGING ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS? - Pilot Phase

有效和高效地处理废水是任何现代经济中的紧迫问题。虽然有大量和类型的系统是可靠的和强大的，基于化学和物理工程的组合，这些需要广泛的工程设计和昂贵的。这使得它们在许多情况下安装和维持不切实际。有一个日益增长的趋势是探索使用低成本的系统，依靠生物成分来提供类似的治疗水平。这些系统的理想目标是，它们表现出相同水平的可靠性和处理性能，但能够抵抗电磁和处理流扰动，并且可以在此类事件后恢复-有时称为自我修复。该项目的目的是将生态研究中产生的概念带入工程领域-是否有可能通过增加系统的物理和生物多样性来提供有效，高效和强大的系统？生物多样性研究表明，更多的生物多样性系统既能提高功能（如生产力），又能提高抵抗力和复原力（如耐旱性）。本试验项目旨在研究如何设计和开发生物多样性受模块内环境的物理和化学复杂性控制的处理模块。这将提供一个平台，以探索将模块组合在一起的潜力，从而提供实际上能够自我维护的抵抗力和弹性系统。

Effective and efficient treatment of wastewaters is a pressing problem in any modern economy. Although there are a large number and types of system which are reliable and robust, based on a combination of chemical and physical engineering, these require extensive engineering design and are costly. This makes them impractical to install and sustain in many situations. There is an increasing trend to explore the use of low-cost systems which depend on biological components to deliver similar levels of treatment. The ideal goal of these systems is that they exhibit the same levels of reliability and treatment performance, but are resistant to environmnetal and treatment stream perturbations and can recover after such events - sometimes refered to as self-healing . The aim of this project is to bring concepts arising from ecological studies into the engineering realm - is it possible to deliver effective, efficient and robust system by increasing the diversity, both physical and biological, of systems? Biodiversity research suggests that more biodiverse systems deliver both increased function (e.g. productivity) and resistance and resilience (e.g. drought tolerance). This pilot project is to investigate how we might design and develop treatment modules where the biodiversity is controlled by the physical and chmeical complexity of the in-module environment. This will provide a platform for exploring the potential of combining modules to deliver resistant and resilient systems capable of, in effect, self-maintenance.