Organics Technical Paper Presentation at the European Wastewater Management Conference
On the 16th and 17th of July, the European Wastewater Management held a Conference and Exhibition at the Hilton Hotel in Birmingham. The conference this year was an excellent venue to meet with other professionals and practitioners in the wastewater management industry. It provided a forum at which the latest ideas and innovations were highlighted and submitted for peer review and discussion.
The European Wastewater Management Conference is one of the foremost forums for bringing together visitors and suppliers, users, and innovators in the crucial area of treating our wastewater. This venue proved to be a useful management briefing for those interested in ensuring that the treatment cycle is closed, providing insight into the optimisation of resources and the continuing implementation of the precepts of the circular economy.
The conference this year focused on the treatment of municipal wastewater, as well as the digitalisation of the process. The emphasis is now not only on the technical aspects of wastewater treatment but also on securing the digitalisation process; one that has to be addressed to ensure that unexpected events cannot disrupt this critical service. Operators must maintain compliance with national and international regulations under all circumstances.
Amongst the many facets of the process of water treatment, operators, managers, and consultants carefully analysed the critical aspect of environmental impact. Indeed, ecological harm mitigation is the focal point of much of the innovation and research that is currently ongoing around what is an essential engineering activity. As temperatures soar across our planet, it has never been more urgent to search for ways in which societies can carry out water treatment so that its impact on the environment is minimised. Like all aspects of waste management, while cost and associated financial modeling are significant facets of successful performance, the technology employed must ensure not only that commercial viability is maintained but that facilities for water treatment minimise their carbon footprint, and our shared environmental heritage is not compromised.
Organics took advantage of the opportunity to present a poster that presented our engineering capabilities in the area of thermal ammonia stripping. This patented technology has been successfully employed on several sites to reduce concentrations of ammoniacal nitrogen in wastewater, in particular in landfill leachate and anaerobic digestion systems. The poster highlighted two locations where Organics’ systems have been installed and have been successfully operating for many years.
The systems presented have numerous advantages, including:
- The process achieves high removal rates within a relatively small footprint
- The process is particularly suited to high-strength ammoniated water
- There are no major chemical additions required
- Ammonia removal by this means mitigates greenhouse gas emissions, by preventing the formation of nitrous oxide
- The system has a relatively rapid start-up when compared to biological systems, being measured in hours, rather than days, weeks or months
- There is no risk of bacterial failure
- There is no sludge formation
- The system is relatively easy to operate compared to biological systems
- Alternative heat sources can be used, such as excess landfill gas or heat from engines.
Ammonia is joining the growing list of substances that society needs to prevent from polluting the environment and, where practical, should be recovered and recycled. The combination of thermal ammonia stripping with waste heat to meet these objectives assists with ensuring a long-term sustainable solution to the challenge of ammonia pollution.
