Achieving Circular Wastewater Management with Machine Learning

Effective wastewater treatment is essential to the health of the environment and municipal wastewater treatment plants in Canada are required to achieve specific effluent water quality goals to minimize the impact of human generated wastewater on the surrounding environment. Most wastewater treatment plants include a combination of physical, chemical, and biological unit processes and therefore have several energy inputs to drive mixing, maintain ideal temperatures, and move water from one unit process to the next. Methane and other gases (biogas) and biosolids are generated during wastewater treatment. Both of these can be captured and repurposed for use within and outside of the wastewater treatment plant and can in some cases even be converted to revenue streams. Thus, biogas and biosolids are considered recoverable resources rather than waste products. Circular wastewater management (CWM) is an emerging approach that aims to optimize wastewater treatment, energy usage, and resource recovery. To achieve CWM, the operators of wastewater treatment plants must have a thorough understanding and reliable control of the different elements of the system. This is usually achieved using a combination of operator expertise, online sensors, and offline water quality measurements coupled with data collection, storage, and analysis software. TOBECONT’

Faculty Supervisor:

Stephanie Gora;Usman Khan;Satinder Kaur Brar

Student:

Michael Vincent De Santi

Partner:

Ontario Clean Water Agency

Discipline:

Engineering - civil

Sector:

Construction and infrastructure

University:

York University