Innovative technologies & processes enabling energy neutral wastewater treatment

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Over the years, wastewater treatment objectives have become more stringent. These objectives demand more energy and higher wastewater treatment operating costs. These increasing costs coupled with emerging sustainability requirements are propelling researchers, industry, and utilities to come up with more efficient ways of managing wastewater. Mainstream wastewater treatment has undergone a paradigm shift; parties now emphasize wastewater energy recovery and the concurrent reduction of energy consumption. This shift enables wastewater treatment plants to achieve energy neutrality while meeting treatment objectives. Despite extensive effort and rapid technological advances, demonstrating mainstream energy neutrality is still challenging due to the diluted nature and lower operating temperature characterizing mainstream wastewater. Other challenges include process complexity, knowledge gaps in process control and the lack of robust technologies. The proposed research program will develop and integrate innovative nitrogen and carbon management technologies and processes to achieve energy-neutral mainstream wastewater treatment. The program will use an innovative membrane-aerated biofilm technology to enable an innovative low-energy-consuming nitrogen removal process. The program will integrate this low-energy-consuming process with an upstream mainstream anaerobic pre-treatment process for capturing and diverting carbon from wastewater and further enhancing energy production. This enhanced energy production, coupled with lower energy demand for nitrogen removal, is expected to result in an overall energy-neutral platform for mainstream wastewater treatment. A multi-scale approach with both bench- and pilot-scale components will be used to define process configurations, kinetic parameters, and the impact of carbon-to-nitrogen ratio and temperature on process performance and limits. Furthermore, carbon and nitrogen processes and energy models will be implemented in an open-source wastewater software environment, ultimately demonstrating energy neutrality on a computer simulation platform for a wide range of design parameters. This research will enable holistic process optimization, process performance evaluation, and energy benchmarking of these newly developed innovative processes and technologies. In this manner, wastewater can be treated with energy neutrality, not only ensuring a clean environment but doing so without further stress on the environment. A future generation of highly qualified personnel will be trained both in multi-scale experimental methods and computer simulations, thus keeping Canada on the forefront of energy-neutral wastewater treatment strategy and technology development.