Optimization and energy harnessing of a waste-water treatment plant

Abstract

The treatment of waste-water is a constant concern of the modern world, given the inherent enhancement of human-life quality and wellbeing through public health improvement. The present work aims at optimizing a state-of-art waste-water treatment plant model and to propose different co-generation process configurations with the purpose of recovering energy by means of burning the biogas produced by the plant and, consequently, reducing its overall operational costs. The optimization took into account disturbances of the waste-water treatment plant feed in order to meet environmental regulations. The results from the co-generation implementation show that a reduction of up to 73% of the electrical power consumption, and all of the heating required by this plant model.