Development of a novel model to quantify nitrous oxide emissions in the biological nutrient removal process of wastewater treatment plants

Environmental Pollution

Brunel

Brunel

This PhD project aims to develop, test and validate a new software tool for the online monitoring, control and mitigation of the carbon footprint of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Gaseous emissions are produced at various stages during the wastewater treatment in a WWTP. Strategies to decrease the required amount of energy for this operation may in fact cause greater harm due to the increase of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions. Various GHGs emissions are associated with the construction and operation of WWTPs; these include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (NO2), with nitrous oxide being 298 times more harmful than CO2. The development of a tool being able to accurately record online the various gaseous emissions during the construction and the different treatment processes of WWTPs is important in order to detect the emissions at the moment of their occurrence, immediately apply measures to reduce the gaseous contaminants and link the emissions with a particular activity in the plant. The online GHGs emissions monitoring and control system will be an innovative, low-cost and flexible configuration based on wireless sensor networks for the real-time detection of the GHGs and with a view to reducing them during the operation of WWTPs.

• Massara, T.M., Komesli, O.T., Sozudogru, O., Komesli, S., Katsou, E., (2017) A Mini Review of the Techno-environmental Sustainability of Biological Processes for the Treatment of High Organic Content Industrial Wastewater Streams Waste Biomass Valori DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12649-017-0022-y
• Massara, T.M., Malamis, S., Guisasola, A., Baeza, J.A., Noutsopoulos, C., Katsou, E., (2017) A review on nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions during biological nutrient removal from municipal wastewater and sludge reject water. Sci. Total Environ DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.03.191
• Massara, T.M., Katsou, E., Guisasola, A., Rodriguez-Caballero, A., Pijuan, M., Baeza, J.A., (2017) Modelling of N2O emissions in a full-scale activated sludge sequencing batch reactor.