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都面临的紧迫问题。虽然有大量可靠和坚固的系统，基于化学和物理工程的组合，但这些系统需要广泛的工程设计，而且成本高昂。这使得在许多情况下安装和维护它们不切实际。越来越多的趋势是探索使用低成本的系统，这些系统依赖于生物成分来提供类似水平的治疗。这些系统的理想目标是，它们表现出相同水平的可靠性和治疗性能，但能抵抗环境和治疗流扰动，并能在此类事件后恢复--有时被称为自我修复。该项目的目的是将生态学研究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供更高的功能(如生产力)，又能提供抗性和复原力(如耐旱性)。这个试点项目是为了调查我们如何设计和开发治疗模块，其中生物多样性由模块内环境的物理和化学复杂性控制。这将为探索组合模块的潜力提供一个平台，以提供实际上能够自我维护的耐受和有弹性的系统。

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.