RedNOVEDAR

The Sewage Treatment Plant of the XXI Century

Financed by

Número de expediente: CTQ2014-51693-REDC
Programa: Consolider

Partners

• Universidad de Santiago de Compostela (USC)

• Universidad de Cantabria (UC)

• Universidad de Barcelona (UB)

• Universidad de Cádiz (UCA)

• Universidad de Girona (UdG)

• Ceit-IK4

• Universidad de Valladolid

• Universidad de Valencia (UV)

• Universidad de Murcia (UM)

• Wageningen Univ & Research (WUR)

• Tech.Univ. Delft (TUD)

Summary

NOVEDAR_Consolider project started in November 2007 with the aim of developing the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) of the XXI Century. The three main challenges of the project are improving water and product recovery during wastewater treatment, minimising energy requirements and operational costs of full-scale plants and minimising sludge production.

The project aims at developing advanced technologies for wastewater treatment and post-treatment, including suspended biomass, biofilm and hybrid reactors, Membrane Biological Reactors (MBR), coagulation-flocculation-sedimentation processes, Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) columns, oxidation processes such as ozonation, photochemical oxidation and fenton-like systems. Sludge anaerobic digestion will be optimized and different strategies for the minimization of sludge production will be studied. The management of the excess sludge will be address by optimizing its thermal drying, with the generation of pellets or granules of the dry product for its agronomical or energetic valuation will be done. The construction of integrated “Plant-wide” models for the dynamic simulation of STP, the development of a Decision Support System (DSS) for the evaluation, comparison and conceptual design of technologies and the performance of cost analysis and evaluation of the technical, economic and environmental efficiency associated with wastewater treatment processes will also play an important role in the project.

The NOVEDAR_Consolider team is integrated by 11 research groups, from 9 Spanish and 2 Dutch centres, with a particular expertise in complementary research areas. The sharing of knowledge and technologies between research groups is fundamental in order to achieve scientific excellence in the addressed topics.

The NOVEDAR_Consolider project was formally finished in 2012 but, since then, the NOVEDAR team is continuing its activity within the NOVEDAR Excellence Network, also financed by the framework of the Spanish Ministry.

Ceit's role in the project

Ceit-Ik4 is leading and coordinating the research activities of the team based on mathematical modelling and process control.