Network for the sustainable use of energy in water and wastewater treatment
Lead Research Organisation:
CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY
Department Name: Sch of Industrial and Manufacturing Scie
Abstract
The water that you drink and use to flush the toilet all needs to be treated to provide everyone with safe drinking water and to protect the environment. However, this treatment uses a large amount of energy (8,000 GWh) each year. This is equivalent to you running about 100 million tumble driers non-stop for a year.The energy that is used for water and wastewater treatment comes from non-renewable fossil fuel energy resources such as coal, oil and gas. Furthermore, when they are used they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which contributes to global warming. Therefore, if the amount of energy that is used to treat your drinking water can be reduced then less non-renewable energy resources will be used up and less carbon dioxide will be released into the atmosphere. In our proposal we intend to establish a network of people to develop research ideas to reduce energy use in water and wastewater treament. Some of the projects we will be looking at will include developing new treatment processes which use less energy. We will also examine increasing the production of more biogas. Biogas is produced during wastewater treatment and can be used to supply energy instead of using fossil fuels. We also intend to develop a web site and stage a number of meetings in the UK so that good ideas regarding energy use can be passed to others. The people that are going to be in the network include all the major water companies like Thames, Severn Trent, Yorkshire, Northumbrian, Anglian and United Utilities, government orgnisations like the Environment Agency and other Universities namely Imperial College, Strathcylde, Birmingham, Warwick and Edinburgh. They all have particular expertise in either water or wastewater treatment processes or in energy conservation and renewable energy.
Organisations
- CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY (Lead Research Organisation)
- Severn Trent (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- United Utilities (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Newcastle University (Project Partner)
- Anglian Water Services (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Thames Water (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Imperial College London (Project Partner)
- Northumbrian Water Group plc (Project Partner)
- Dwr Cymru Welsh Water (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- University of Warwick (Project Partner)
- Environment Agency (Project Partner)
- Kelda Group (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- University of South Wales (Project Partner)
- Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Project Partner)
- University of Strathclyde (Project Partner)
- University of East Anglia (Project Partner)
- University of Edinburgh (Project Partner)
People |
ORCID iD |
Elise Cartmell (Principal Investigator) | |
Hoi Yeung (Co-Investigator) |
Publications
Blaney S
(2008)
Investigation of the exploitation of a fast-sampling single gamma densitometer and pattern recognition to resolve the superficial phase velocities and liquid phase water cut of vertically upward multiphase flows
in Flow Measurement and Instrumentation
E. J. McAdam (Author)
(2011)
Integrating anaerobic processes into wastewater treatment
in WATER SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Lester JN
(2009)
A novel approach to the anaerobic treatment of municipal wastewater in temperate climates through primary sludge fortification.
in Environmental technology
Velasquez-Orta SB
(2009)
Energy from algae using microbial fuel cells.
in Biotechnology and bioengineering