CAEE Seminar: Energy demands, Perturbations, and Process Resilience at a Water Reclamation Plant

The Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering department will host a seminar featuring Junjie Zhu, an Environmental Engineering Ph.D. candidate at Armour College of Engineering. The seminar will discuss Energy demands, Perturbations, and Process Resilience at a Water Reclamation Plant.

Abstract

Aeration accounts for a large fraction of energy consumption in conventional water reclamation plants (WRPs). Process operations at older WRPs can satisfy effluent permit requirements but typically operate with excess aeration. Meanwhile, a WRP should maintain its resilience or ability to quickly return to original operation conditions to deal with different perturbations. Perturbations such as storm events, especially long-term successive storm flows, can adversely affect operations. Therefore, balancing energy demands, perturbations, and process resilience benefits cost savings, effluent quality, and long-term operations. This presentation includes an assessment of possible aeration savings and investigating process resilience based on a WRP simulation model. We applied the concepts of recovery time to quantify resilience and to investigate how different storm flow characteristics (flow rate and duration) and the amount of aeration influence resilience. Results suggest that aeration costs could be reduced by as much as 50% while still maintaining the resilience needed to meet effluent quality permit requirements even during challenging perturbations.