Experimental Biology and Engineering at the Pilot Scale - Strategic Equipment

This National Facility for Experimental Biology and Engineering at the Pilot Scale aims to fulfill a strategically and critically important research infrastructure gap that prevents the sustainable provision of clean water for all. Our current decentralized wastewater treatment model needs replacing with those that generate energy from waste and recover resources such as nutrients. Wastewater treatment alone accounts for up to 1.0% of total UK and 1.3% of US electricity. It is both capitally and operationally expensive, for which the customer ultimately pays.

In the next century the global water industry must transition to novel low carbon low energy technologies that will recover value from wastewater while cleaning it to a high standard. The rigorous, replicated large-scale experimentation vital to meeting this goal is risky, costly and a significant barrier to innovation. This shared Facility will allow multiple international and national researchers to conduct large-scale experimental investigation of water engineering innovations that are scientifically rigorous and industrially credible. It will set a new global standard for wastewater research and place the UK as an international centre for innovation in wastewater treatment.

Most innovations die on the academic lab benches and are not effectively translated into engineering reality. This is because lab-scale innovations lack credibility with Industry practitioners. Most large-scale pilot studies are un-replicated, lack control and thus the rigor and prestige of the lab. The skepticism of practitioners is well founded. The scale-up of even relatively simple physical-chemical and single species reactors is complex and challenging. In open biological wastewater treatment systems, the composition and dynamics of the quintillion (billion billion billion) bacteria at the real larger scale differ profoundly from the thousand billion bacteria we see at the bench scale.

This National Facility will consist of replicated transportable custom-built modular wastewater treatment plants at 1-12 m^3 scale that includes conventional (activated sludge and trickling filters), new energy generating technologies (microbial electrochemical fuel cells and anaerobic reactors), and wetlands/lagoons that can be used to treat polluted run-off water in rural and city places (e.g. Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems). These resources will help to reduce barriers to innovation by allowing the Water Industry and the next generation of water engineers and managers to accelerate the translation of innovations from research into the real world for the benefit of the economy, the customer and the environment we rely upon.

The project team has an exceptional record of conducting high impact research. For example, research undertaken by the team, with project partner Northumbrian Water Ltd (NWL), has been showcased at the highest levels of OFWAT and the Environment Agency, and the team's research directly informed the design of the UK's first ever large scale, low energy, treatment system for metal-polluted waters.

The main impacts of the National Facility for Experimental Biology and Engineering at the Pilot Scale will be in the water sector, and in particular with water companies nationally and internationally, the water sector supply chain, such as the large engineering consulting companies which design wastewater treatment plants, and regulators of the water environment. This research is about improving understanding of wastewater treatment and developing better ways to effectively and efficiently treat domestic and industrial wastewater and, in particular, to develop treatment systems that are low carbon and low energy, and which are able to successfully treat existing and new contaminants in wastewaters. Newcastle University already has a strategic Memorandum of Understanding with NWL to ensure that the research has an impact in the water industry, and the project team has very good links with Defra, the Environment Agency and international engineering consulting firms. We will ensure that these different organisations benefit from the research undertaken at the pilot plant facility by inviting representatives of these organisations to annual projects workshops. In addition the project Advisory Steering Committee will be made up of representatives from NWL, the Environment Agency, UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR) and senior figures in the research community.

Users of the pilot plant facility will publicise their research and its results on a dedicated project website, which will ensure that the outcomes of the research reach as wide an audience as possible, both nationally and internationally. Furthermore, the project team will attend national and international conferences to ensure that the outcomes of research at the pilot plant facility are shared with a wide academic network, and results of projects will be published in journals widely read not only by academics but also by the water sector, to maximise benefit to industry. To help achieve the maximum impact a dedicated Research Impact Officer, and also a Science Communications Manager, will be actively involved in the project.