By Anil Bhaskar, who leads an IoT development team at National Control devices and has designed and developed over 100 Wireless IoT Sensors.
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Wastewater management, defined as the collection, treatment and recycling of wastewater, is a crucial strategy for safeguarding water systems.
So why is modernizing wastewater management crucial? As per Scientific American, Jackson, Mississippi, is one of the many cities that is failing to provide clean water to its residents in the wake of the population influx. This also means that without upgrading our wastewater management technology, our solutions will not overcome the issue. Here are three tech innovations that can help us do that:
1. Thermal Hydrolysis
Waste management begins at collection, but the most challenging stages are the separation and processing steps. Thermal hydrolysis is a technology that simplifies the latter two.
Three functions of thermal hydrolysis technology are biogas generation, waste side product minimization and wastewater treatment. Conventional wastewater treatment facilities must plan for large amounts of sludge produced during the industrial wastewater treatment process. In contrast, thermal hydrolysis facilities view sludge as a useful energy source rather than trash.
After the sewage is cleaned up and the muck is gathered, biogas generation may start. In huge containers, the muck is boiled and compacted. High pressures of seven to 12 bars and high temperatures of 160 to 170 degrees Celsius are needed. This process helps separate the solid and liquid components of the sewage and then further process the solid waste to compostable biogas generation plants.
2. Internet Of Things
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of gadgets, information and other technical elements that enables any business to function more smoothly without human intervention. IoT has slowly permeated both the commercial and daily worlds. Uses for IoT in wastewater treatment have many uses, but three major ones include:
• Connecting datasets to the network. Most IoT systems collect data that is helpful to functional intelligence. To create an enterprise asset management system that can gather data on performance and reliability, operational efficiencies, water quality and pollutants, sensor monitoring can benefit from the use of IoT sensors.
• Detection of hazardous chemicals. Wastewater has a variety of germs, chemicals and contaminants either dissolved or immersed in it, making it considerably riskier than its physical counterparts. Treatment facilities utilize a variety of IoT sensors to identify the presence of these harmful components in the water. Following that, other methods can be used to eliminate these pollutants from the wastewater.
• Equipment management and maintenance. Management at various points in the wastewater supply chain may conduct data-driven remedial actions on demand using the information gathered by IoT water sensors. These insights provide crucial information about the changing status of water supplies and equipment.
3. Microbial Fuel Cells
Microbial fuel cell technology employs microbes to treat wastewater and is another technology that can do three tasks at once: wastewater treatment, clean power generation and energy storage. Even more astounding is that the bacteria produce charged electrons that may be used to generate power due to their digestion of wastewater sludge.
Researchers have already produced significant power under controlled laboratory circumstances by directing the electrons generated during bacterial metabolism to an electrode.
The main reasons why these technologies have not yet become commonplace in most wastewater management plants are set-up and maintenance costs.
They are difficult to run as they need a technical maintenance team to take care of them when something goes wrong. A good workaround would be to lease the maintenance aspect of the business to a technological partner or an IoT startup specializing in wastewater management workflows, especially until you have the capital to create an in-house maintenance team.
It is difficult to keep up with the current influx of waste generation if we do not devise and adopt new ways to make the wastewater management process more efficient. Thermal hydrolysis and microbial fuel cells are great for separating and processing wastewater, while IoT sensors can help provide data.
