A new plant wide modelling approach for the reduction of greenhouse Gas emission from wastewater treatment plants

Recent studies about greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions show that sewer collection systems and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are anthropogenic GHG potential sources. Therefore, they contribute to the climate change and air pollution. This increasing interest towards climate change has led to the development of new tools for WWTP design and management. This paper presents the first results of a research project aiming at setting-up an innovative mathematical model platform for the design and management of WWTPs. More specifically, the study presents the project’s strategy aimed at setting-up a plant-wide mathematical model which can be used as a tool for reducing/controlling GHG from WWTP. Such tool is derived from real data and mechanicistic detailed models (namely, Activated Sludge Model’s family). These latter, although are a must in WWTP modelling, hamper a comprehensive and easy application due to complexity, computational time burdens and data demanding for a robust calibration/application. This study presents a summary of the results derived from detailed mechanistic models which have been applied to both water and sludge line of a WWTP: primary treatment, biological reactor, secondary settler, membrane bioreactor, sludge digester etc. The project is organized in overall four research units (RUs) which focus each on precise WWTP units.