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Communicating Smart Meter Value

Sep 9 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

If you are involved in Management or Customer Service and are responsible for communicating the value of smart meters to your utility customers, you don’t want to miss this online discussion - Communicating Smart Meter Value.  more...

Social Media: The new frontier in recruiting, communications and marketing

Sep 13 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

Join social media mavens Matthew Burks and Amanda Shewmake as they provide an insider's perspective on how HR, communications and marketing professionals in energy companies can harness the power of social media to be more effective and productive. more...

Eliminating Obstacles and Delivering the Benefits of the Smart Grid - IBM's Optimized Energy Value Chain (OEVC)

Sep 14 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

The convergence of power and information technologies in the smart grid has created opportunities for finer grained and broader controls of energy flows. These opportunities can improve electric service in multiple dimensions: lower cost, greater reliability, greater customer satisfaction, and more...

Achieving Operational Excellence - What to Consider Before Implementing or Upgrading Your Distribution Management Solutions

Sep 16 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

Significant cost over runs. Changing business requirements. A well thought out plan is essential. Attend this free webcast discussion to hear inside hear three experts in utility operations discuss what utilities need to evaluate when they are considering upgrading or more...

Outsmarting the Smart Grid: IT, Security and Communication Infrastructure  Challenges & Opportunities for Utilities

Sep 21 2010 - 2010-01-01 12:00:00 - Your City

The smart grid is shifting the playing field for utilities. And when the game changes, it pays to be prepared. A nimble solutions partner can help you design the solutions that keep operations on track, even as new challenges come more...

1st CSP Today Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Summit India

Sep 7 2010 - Sep 8 2010 - New Delhi India

Deliver a profitable, productive and commercially successful large scale CSP business in India. Building on the success of past events in USA, Europe & MENA, CSP Today brings to New Delhi the most relevant international experience for the concentrated solar more...

Offshore Wind Energy in North America's Great Lakes Conference

Sep 9 2010 - Sep 10 2010 - Toronto

Two day conference that tackles the most important challenges. A blend of European knowledge from the companies who have been installing offshore wind turbines for the last decade alongside local state governing bodies and leading project developers. Permitting, securing long more...

Autovation 2010

Sep 12 2010 - Sep 15 2010 - Austin, TX - USA

Autovation 2010 is a not-to-miss educational forum that will attract utility executives from around the world looking for new ways to optimize their operations through automation technologies. more...

Global Sustainable Bioenergy North American Convention

Sep 14 2010 - Sep 16 2010 - Minneapolis, MN - USA

The North American convention provides a remarkable opportunity to play a part in guiding renewable energy policy for the 21st century. Attendees will create a resolution that, along with similar resolutions already drafted on four other continents, will help set more...

GridWise Global Forum

Sep 21 2010 - Sep 23 2010 - Washington, DC - USA

Hosted by the GridWise(R) Alliance and the U.S. Department of Energy, the GridWise Global Forum will convene thought leaders from the highest levels of government, business, NGOS, and academia from around the world to discuss the ultimate enabling potential of more...

1. Intro to Nat Gas Trading & Hedging 2. Option Applications in Energy

Sep 20 2010 - Sep 23 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

Introduction to Natural Gas Trading & Hedging - This program provides a comprehensive understanding of the structures that underlie Natural Gas trading. Beyond Essentials: Option Applications in Energy - This course provides a solid practical and conceptual (non-quantitative) understanding of more...

Electric Business Understanding Seminar

Sep 20 2010 - Sep 21 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

Electric Business Understanding provides a comprehensive overview of the electric industry. Position yourself for career advancement by gaining a solid understanding of how the electric business works including key physical, market, and regulatory aspects and how market participants navigate this more...

Electric Market Dynamics Seminar

Sep 22 2010 - Sep 23 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

Electric Market Dynamics offers participants an in-depth understanding of North American electric markets and how they function. Enhance your career by furthering your knowledge of market structures, pricing mechanisms, services offered in markets, and how various participants use the markets more...

Gas and Electric Business Understanding Seminar

Oct 5 2010 - Oct 6 2010 - Los Angeles, CA - USA

Gas and Electric Business Understanding provides a comprehensive overview of the natural gas and electric industries. Position yourself for career success by gaining a solid understanding of how each business works, including key physical, market and regulatory aspects, as well more...

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Energy Efficient Waste Water Treatment
6.26.09   Shrikant Lohokare, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Tech2Biz Ventures

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    As water becomes scarce and as governments apply more stringent regulations for wastewater disposal, an industry has grown up treating the waste liquids and effluents from industries and municipalities.

    Conventional aerobic industrial and municipal wastewater treatment (WWT) requires vast amounts of energy, mostly for aeration (oxygen supply) to provide biomass growth. In addition inherently substantial amounts of bio sludge are produced that require expensive treatments and disposal. No one can ignore the energy shortage we are facing today and consequently all our waste handling will be undertaken by improved low energy technologies in the future. Considering that a sizable chunk (greater than 5%) of the energy needs are needed for water treatment, the impact of combining energy minimization with advanced waste water treatment systems could be significant.

    The global wastewater treatment industry is worth around $60 billion per annum, with almost an equal split between North America, Europe and Asia amounting to 50% and the rest of the world takes up the remainder.

    Industrial influents are discharged from almost all production activities and water is used as solvent (washing) and as ingredient. The run-off is disposed of in the wastewater system, and very high organics loads are commonly found in many industries influents such as large farms and agricultural communities, dairy farms, poultry farms, piggeries, (slurry, manure), aquaculture (fish) farms, meat processing complexes (slaughterhouses, abattoirs), fruit processing, wine (wineries) beer, distilleries, soft drinks, dairy factories, cheese whey, agro industries (coffee, chocolate, sugar cane, sugar refineries, others), pharmaceutical industry, leaching (percolate) from landfills, etc. Many of these industries not only generate high organic loaded wastewater, but also use heat for their production processes. The driving factors for energy minimization considerations are 1) Regulation on disposal of industrial effluents, 2) Price and operational costs, and 3) Foot print -- industrial and agricultural land space can be valuable.

    Wastewater treatment is usually divided into chemical, physical, chemical/physical and biological. Biological processes are regarded as expensive and sensitive (up stream events such as toxic substance release, pH changes, etc), require continuous professional attention, occupy large areas, and operate poorly at low temperature conditions. Two major biological treatments are popular; aerobic (including many types of activated sludge) and anaerobic digestion for methane generation. When relating to industries which emit high organic loads, the aerobic treatments are regarded as expensive and are usually employed to reduce the loads before entering the municipal WWTP. On the hand anaerobic (without oxygen input) treatments are even more expensive and regarded as not satisfying from the effluents quality point of view, but are occasionally installed to recover energy. Advanced reactors offer the following integration to simplify design, smaller footprint, lower costs, minimal energy consumption and CO2 emission, low sludge yield and maximize waste to energy conversion efficiency.

    • Thermophilic operation of the solids reactor. Anaerobic thermophilic processing (microbial activity in 50-60 degC range) has also been well researched and being commercially used by many applications. The energy efficiency comes from capability to provide higher biogas yields in a single stage reactor system with a smaller footprint for solubles and then optimization of overall process performance in an integrated complete solution approach. The energy needed to heat the reactor can be provided from the system energy production. Mesophilic process requirements (30-40 degC microbial activity) for different category of organics than those processed by thermophilic processing may require operation in intermediate process regime with a wider process window. Other approaches have addressed this problem using a two stage reactor system which has also helped in maintaining better control on process performance and yield.
    • Anoxy gas floatation (DAF technology -- dissolved air floatation)
    • Anaerobic digestion. This process enables the bacteria to work on the pollutants and treat the water. Previously considered to be too expensive, anaerobic technologies are attracting much attention as methane energy is produced lowering overall energy needs.
    The core technology relies on a two reactor design -- parallel and interconnected. There are two reactors, one for dissolved fraction incorporating biomass floatation and advanced bacteria control systems and the other for solids degradation, and there is a symbiosis between the two.

    In the general scheme of the process, solids are first separated from the dissolved fraction which is mostly sugars. Because the solids degradation is slower, a separate bioreactor is beneficial so that the overall process is speeded up and the footprint reduced. The waste from the non-soluble reactor is transferred to the dewatering press having stable sludge, and the liquor is recycled into the second solubles reactor. It combines anaerobic, biogas floatation, and fermentation processes. The biosolids are recycled into the solids reactor such that valuable bacteria is not lost and the liquid effluent is disposed in the municipal wastewater treatment plant. Both reactors produce methane which can be put through a generator to make electricity. This energy is used to run the process and the surplus sold back to the grid. In a typical industrial processing application, chemical costs are offset by sludge treatment costs of the standard approach. Since there is a lot of published work and knowledge on anaerobic thermophilic process optimization and scaleup, development cycle is short and faster deployment with revenue generation possible.

    The global perspective is changing dramatically, and in particular because of the energy crisis and resource shortages such as fresh water. Adoption of a new approach that will fully address both the energy and environmental issues is required and happening especially in Europe and expected to grow in North America and rest of the world.

    For information on purchasing reprints of this article, contact Tim Tobeck ttobeck@energycentral.com.
    Copyright 2010 CyberTech, Inc.
     
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    Readers Comments

    Date Comment
    Jerry Toman
    7.17.09
    IMO, the various means of treating wastewater (after looking for economies upstream first) have HUGE potential either for energy saving or production, as well as resource recovery and most definitely should have a share of the "energy investment pie."

    Now, I've had two courses in waste water treatment, albeit twenty years ago, and I understand there have been advances since then, BUT, I could not make heads nor tails of the explanation for these presumptive "new" technologies.

    Can't EP have the requirement that such articles include at least a RUDIMENTARY flow diagram to help the reader understand what the author is trying to explain!

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