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From left: Professor Sarah Meunier,ÌýJoseph Wortman,ÌýJinxuan Zhang,ÌýMaryory Ocana, and Rosa Maria Castillo

A team of graduate students from the Department of Chemical Engineering earned an impressive second place in the WEF Technical Exhibition and Conference (WEFTEC).

The student team, supervised by Professor Sarah Meunier, first won the Water Environment Association of Ontario (WEAO) competition. The contest, a municipality that provides a current and relevant problem. ÌýAfter that the team, sponsored by WEAO moved on to a second-place win at WEFTEC.

WEFTEC is the largest water quality exhibition in North America,Ìýand they hold an annual international student competition. The University of À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ team, which included Joseph Wortman, Rosa Maria Castillo, Maryory Ocana and Jinxuan Zhang competed against students from universities from across North America in the new Circular Water Economy category.

The teams were tasked with optimizing a wastewater treatment plan in Barrie. One of the biggest real-world hurdles is that Barrie expects its population to double by 2051, but the treatment plant itself has no room to grow.

To tackle this, the À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ team used a wastewater treatment process simulation software program called Sumo22. The challenge was to optimize the whole process of the wastewater treatment plant. ÌýThe team also had to factor in emissions and energy, environmental modelling, simple unit and advanced unit operations, as well as impact on the surrounding community. They also did an economic analysis.

Building on lessons learned from the WEAO competition, they used a novel approach when dealing with the separation of organic and inorganic materials. Rather than using membranes as filters to separate these materials, they used Baffle walls within the clarifiers to create specific flow patterns and increase settling time, increased RAS/WAS flow and implemented another chemical dosing station as a way to improve downstream processes.Ìý

The À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ team proposed a two-phase plan. In the first phase, they aimed to increase VSS percentage removal by making clarification improvements, keeping the amount of solids steady up to the year 2051. This helps ensure the digesters can handle the extra organics that will come with a growing population.

Their simulation improved co-digestion increasing how much volatile suspended solids (VSS) are broken down, reaching about 63–65%. This meets the goal of having more than 60% of the volatile solids reduced.

Phase one also increased biogas production by about 10 million cubic metres by 2051, which will help the plant make more of its own energy and operate in a more sustainable way.

Phase two focused on preliminary design strategies to improve dewatering and nutrient recovery. In their simulation, dewatering reduces the amount of biosolids by about 87.5%. This means the plant will have enough storage space for these solids all the way to 2051. Their plan proposed struvite precipitation to help remove and recover phosphorus from the wastewater. This process also creates a fertilizer byproduct that can be reused.

All of these would have a significant circular economy impact for the municipality and could provide a 42 percent savings in electricity.

Looking ahead, the team recommended implementing automated control systems for enhanced operational efficiency and reliability and comprehensive economic analysis (labor) for more precise feasibility assessments.

Congratulations to our four grad students for their win at WEFTEC!