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EOS-A multi criteria expert system for improving energy consumption on municipal WWTPs-theory and practice
Dr. Schutz Georges, CRP H.Tudor / CRTE, Luxembourg
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EOS-A multi criteria expert system for improving energy consumption on municipal WWTPs-theory and practice
The energy consumption of urban waste-water treatment is far from negligible. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are frequently ranked as the highest individual energy consumers operated by municipalities. After almost 20 years of optimization practice in Switzerland and Germany implementing energy optimization measures, these efforts show highly surprising results, with in some cases a reduction of energy consumption of up to 50%.
One of the main criticisms of conventional energy optimization processes is the use of long-term historical operational data only. Using only historical data limits the efficiency of the optimisation process, especially since the exercise is, at best, performed once per year.
The INTERREG IVB North West Europe project INNERS (INNovative Energy Recovering Strategies in the urban water cycle, www.inners.eu), aims to implement methodologies in order to exploit the energy potential of the urban water cycle, both optimising energy consumption as well as energy recovery of all parts of the system.
Within this European project, one action is focusing on providing an efficient tool for energy optimisation of WWTPs, by developing on-demand evaluations (e.g. daily, weekly monthly) for the energy performance of the plants by examining the energy consumption in quasi real-time. The developed tool, the Energy Online System (EOS), consists of a database, in which the operating data from the WWTPs is stored, and software, which processes the raw data from the database and calculates efficiency parameters (so called Key Performance Indicators, KPIs).
Within this short workshop the principals of the current practice of energy assessment and optimisation is presented as a basic background. In a second step the fundamental aspects of the Energy Online System will be discussed. Finally the workshop will end with a hands-on part where the participants will use EOS to identify energy optimisation potential of a virtual WWTP.