Sustainability in Wastewater - a Victim of Success

I was having a conversation with a colleague the other day, and it highlighted to me that things that seem self-evident to everyone aren’t always as obvious as you think. When wastewater treatment and its sustainability is your day job, it's easy to forget that most people don’t spend much time thinking about wastewater—until it becomes a problem.

With that in mind, I thought I’d discuss the way sustainability in wastewater systems is often currently overlooked and share some key insights into what makes the ALGAESYS treatment train unique in the wastewater treatment space and how this innovative technology makes it a truly sustainable solution.

The Barriers to Success

Whenever you talk about wastewater treatment and sustainability, two key issues immediately come to mind. Power Consumption & Treatment Efficacy. How much energy does your system require? How much water are you returning to the environment, and at what quality?

Most wastewater operations are entirely focused on balancing these two elements, which are directly linked. The more power you use (for aeration, for example), the better the quality of the water treatment, or the faster the water can be treated.

The third issue, often overlooked, is the cost associated with the staffing required to maintain the wastewater treatment plant, and the availability of said staff. While cost is an important element, as hiring mechanical, electrical, chemical, process and biological engineers isn’t cheap, availability is actually the biggest issue. It’s not that there aren’t enough engineering graduates to fulfill our needs; it’s the tyranny of distance. It’s easy enough to get engineers to do the job within 50 kilometres of a metropolitan plant, but it becomes significantly more challenging when your plants may be hundreds or thousands of kilometres apart and require weekly visits to keep operating to a reasonable standard.

‘Invisibile’ Infrastructure

Most people don’t give much thought to wastewater infrastructure until the latest “Fat-berg” story drops. Yet, beneath our towns lie kilometres and kilometres of sewerage, pumping stations and pipelines working to get the effluent from homes or businesses to a treatment facility.

We don’t think about it, because it is out of sight and out of mind, plus the renewal/construction cycle is so infrequent that it skips generations. However, this doesn’t stop it from existing. It doesn’t stop wastewater infrastructure from consuming significant quantities of power to keep operating, and it doesn’t stop it from incurring significant costs while restricting urban and industrial development.

Public Consciousness

Finally, we get to the invisible consequence of the efficacy of our wastewater infrastructure. When you want to change public behaviour, there needs to be awareness. When we build hidden infrastructure, like the sewage network and put wastewater treatment facilities far from prying eyes (and smelling noses), we disconnect ourselves from the consequences of what we flush away.

How many people do you think have ever visited a wastewater treatment facility?

… And of those, how many do you think have looked at what is in the screenings bin?

The less we see and interact with what we flush down the toilet, the less inclined we may be to think about it—and whether the toilet or washbasin is the right place to dispose of our waste.

Why ALGAESYS is Sustainable

ALGAESYS addresses the big-ticket items (power, efficacy, and staffing), the supporting infrastructure and public awareness. Our plants use approximately 0.2 kWh of energy per cubic metre of water processed and return the vast majority (85%+) of water back to the environment at a minimum of Class-C quality, good enough to irrigate crops or be reused for practically any industrial process.

Once our plants are fully commissioned and operational, maintenance can be carried out by anyone who has been properly inducted and is principally limited to cleaning tasks and water sampling and testing. No need for advanced engineering qualifications, a basic induction will do.

Our small footprint, minimal power usage and lack of a need for experienced staff means we can operate off-grid, close to where wastewater is produced and can be re-used.

This, in turn, means less supporting infrastructure is required and it also minimises the time between waste production, processing and re-use, resulting in an easier treatment process, more value recovery from the waste and less odours.

Finally, when the wastewater treatment plant is located next door, on your roof, or down the block, in a greenhouse, it becomes visible and valuable to your community. You can see wastewater becoming water for irrigation or industrial purposes and fertiliser for your landscaping/veggie patch or power/heating for your community, and you have the opportunity to visit it and see it in action. You gain an understanding of how it all works and hopefully the feeling of responsibility to ensure that you only ask it to treat what it needs to treat.

Sustainability is as much about public education and awareness as it is about power consumption and where that power comes from. It’s only through wide-spread changes in public behaviour that we can make a significant impact to our footprint.