Impact of Urine Diversion on Downstream Wastewater Treatment Plants

Badeti, Umakant

Impact of Urine Diversion on Downstream Wastewater Treatment Plants

Badeti, Umakant

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Publication Type:: Thesis
Issue Date:: 2023

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Badeti, Umakant
dc.date.accessioned	2024-03-26T02:19:35Z
dc.date.available	2024-03-26T02:19:35Z
dc.date.issued	2023
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/177159
dc.description	University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.description.abstract	Source separation and collection of urine has been proposed as the most suitable approach of recovering of nutrients from wastewater and reusing as renewable fertilizers which inevitably diverts urine and reduces nutrient loads reaching the wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) and ultimately reducing wastewater treatment costs. In this study the impact of urine diversion on the biological treatment processes at a decentralized wastewater treatment plant was investigated using BioWin software for simulations after validating the data from a real WWTP located at the Sydney Central Park building. The simulation study shows that up to 82% N and 30% P load to the WWTP can be reduced by completely diverting urine from the wastewater through source separation and collection. Under the standard WWTP operating conditions, the simulations suggest that 90% urine diversion can help reduce 33% of aeration energy and 25% CO₂ emissions. The impact on the treatment capacity, treatment process, and capital costs were also investigated. The simulation shows that if 75% of the urine is diverted, the treatment capacity of the existing WWTP could be doubled. In fact when the urine diversion exceeds 75%, it was found that the anoxic tank for biological denitrification becomes redundant and the current wastewater treatment process (activated sludge process) could be replaced with a much simpler treatment process with 24% reduction in the capital expenditure (footprint) cost while producing similar effluent quality. Sensitivity analysis suggests that by operating the bioreactor at higher mixed liquor suspended solids concentrations, it could help increase the treatment capacity of the existing plant by about 3.5 times at 75% urine diversion. The model was further applied to investigate the performance of a full-scale urine treatment system by using membrane bioreactor. The simulations showed that at optimised DO set point of 3 mg/L, the energy consumption was 3 kWh/kgN at a volumetric nitrification rate of 310 mgN/L/d which is only about 25-30% of the total energy consumed in the synthesis of a virgin chemical fertilisers. Finally, a comprehensive techno-economic evaluation was conducted to compare the effects of urine diversion and fertiliser processing systems using biological nitrification and road transportation to agricultural farms at different distances from the decentralized system. If urine is diverted, it can help reduce 10-50% of the cumulative energy demand, 10-50% in the operating costs while the capital costs ranged 10% decrease to 15% increase based on the nitrification rates that can be achieved for urine treatment.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.format	Thesis (PhD)
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US.UTF-8
dc.relation	https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/177159/1/thesis.pdf
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights	The author owns the copyright in this thesis including all reproduction and reuse rights for the work. The work may not be altered without the permission of the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from this thesis.
dc.rights	© 2023 Umakant Badeti
dc.rights	au.edu.uts.lib/cph
dc.title	Impact of Urine Diversion on Downstream Wastewater Treatment Plants	en_US.UTF-8
dc.type	Thesis
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*

Abstract:

Source separation and collection of urine has been proposed as the most suitable approach of recovering of nutrients from wastewater and reusing as renewable fertilizers which inevitably diverts urine and reduces nutrient loads reaching the wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) and ultimately reducing wastewater treatment costs. In this study the impact of urine diversion on the biological treatment processes at a decentralized wastewater treatment plant was investigated using BioWin software for simulations after validating the data from a real WWTP located at the Sydney Central Park building. The simulation study shows that up to 82% N and 30% P load to the WWTP can be reduced by completely diverting urine from the wastewater through source separation and collection. Under the standard WWTP operating conditions, the simulations suggest that 90% urine diversion can help reduce 33% of aeration energy and 25% CO₂ emissions. The impact on the treatment capacity, treatment process, and capital costs were also investigated. The simulation shows that if 75% of the urine is diverted, the treatment capacity of the existing WWTP could be doubled. In fact when the urine diversion exceeds 75%, it was found that the anoxic tank for biological denitrification becomes redundant and the current wastewater treatment process (activated sludge process) could be replaced with a much simpler treatment process with 24% reduction in the capital expenditure (footprint) cost while producing similar effluent quality. Sensitivity analysis suggests that by operating the bioreactor at higher mixed liquor suspended solids concentrations, it could help increase the treatment capacity of the existing plant by about 3.5 times at 75% urine diversion. The model was further applied to investigate the performance of a full-scale urine treatment system by using membrane bioreactor. The simulations showed that at optimised DO set point of 3 mg/L, the energy consumption was 3 kWh/kgN at a volumetric nitrification rate of 310 mgN/L/d which is only about 25-30% of the total energy consumed in the synthesis of a virgin chemical fertilisers. Finally, a comprehensive techno-economic evaluation was conducted to compare the effects of urine diversion and fertiliser processing systems using biological nitrification and road transportation to agricultural farms at different distances from the decentralized system. If urine is diverted, it can help reduce 10-50% of the cumulative energy demand, 10-50% in the operating costs while the capital costs ranged 10% decrease to 15% increase based on the nitrification rates that can be achieved for urine treatment.

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