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

在任何现代经济中，有效和高效的废水处理都是一个紧迫的问题。虽然基于化学工程和物理工程的结合，有很多种类的系统是可靠和健壮的，但这些系统需要大量的工程设计，而且成本很高。这使得它们在许多情况下无法安装和维护。探索使用依赖生物成分的低成本系统来提供类似水平的治疗的趋势日益增加。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，但能够抵抗环境和处理流的扰动，并且可以在这些事件之后恢复-有时被称为自愈。该项目的目的是将生态研究中的概念引入工程领域——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、高效和健壮的系统？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），也能提高抗性和复原力（如耐旱性）。这个试点项目是研究我们如何设计和开发处理模块，其中生物多样性是由模块内环境的物理和化学复杂性控制的。这将为探索组合模块的潜力提供一个平台，以提供能够自我维护的抵抗和弹性系统。

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.