Facilities

Facilities

The project will all overlay the most recent developments in lifecycle cost analysis to consider not just the environmental impact of non-compliance, but also the environmental impact of energy inefficiency through carbon emissions. In this way, ACET can transform how WWTPs are designed and operated in next-generation treatment infrastructure. The multiple parameters and moving parts of existing activated sludge systems can be grouped together into a three-way communication process to transform conventional energy-intensive “grey infrastructure” into highly efficient “Blue Infrastructure”.This next-generation style of the digitally driven and controlled process has the potential to reduce aeration energy costs by up to 80%.

ACET proposes the development and demonstration of the novel framework using a series of demonstrator sites uniquely available to the team in the Irish municipal and industrial wastewater sector through support from the national water utility and key industry. In this way, the latest cutting-edge scientific developments developed in the university environment can be readily transferred to a large-scale research platform of full-scale research test beds at live wastewater treatment facilities The project will hone a significant gap in existing research using advanced LCA studies to assess the costs of environmental compliance. For example, the project will consider a case where the ammonium limits are halved to determine if the benefits of reduced emissions outweigh the additional energy and carbon emissions required to do so.