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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SMART-Plant (Scale-up of low-carbon footprint material recovery techniques in existing wastewater treatment plants)

Teaser

Summary

The general objective of SMART-Plant is to validate and to address to the market a portfolio of n.7 eco-innovative solutions (the SMARTechs) that, singularly or combined, can renovate and upgrade existing municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs).

In particular, SMART-Plant aims at reducing the energy and environmental footprint and, contemporary, at recovering valuable materials (the SMART-Products: water, cellulose, biopolymers, nutrients) that are valuable in construction, chemical and agriculture supply chain. SMART-Plant will even close the circular value chain by n.2 eco-innovative downstream demo to produce of bio-composites, P-rich compost and biomass fuels.

In addition, SMART-Plant is assessing opportunities and sustainable business models where the water utilities are engines of circular economy and the citizens (water-tariff-payers) directly benefit of the new circular approach to wastewater management.

Currently there are many barriers that hinder the application of resource recovery technologies and reuse of wastewater-originated valuable materials: relevant scale and long-term viability in real wastewater treatment plants; social and psychological barriers; lack of communication with decision makers; differences in acceptance and practice of resource recovery around the world; lack of linkage and translation from science and innovation to practice and markets; lack of linkage of developments in water industry and other industries.

SMART-Plant is contributing to overcome these barriers providing: long-term validated eco-innovative solutions for cellulose, biopolymers, nutrient and energy recovery integrated in existing wastewater treatment plants and utilities assets; an effective communication on economic and environmental benefits for water utilities, end-users and citizens; support to decision makers in the identification of legislative and regulatory barriers; cross-sectorial connections between water industry and Chemicals, Agriculture, Additive and Construction sectors.

Work performed

The intense activity carried out by the project Consortium in the first 18 months was aimed to prepare and pave the way for the core validation activities (long-term viability the of SMARTechs and demonstration of the SMART-Plant circular business model), carried out during the second reporting period.
Since the beginning of the project, the coordination activity (WP1) was focused on an effective management and monitoring of the project workplan and a smooth communication among the large SMART-Consortium.
All the 7 main-stream and side-stream SMARTechs were designed, constructed, commissioned and started up in the 6 existing medium and large municipal WWTPs located in the Netherlands, Israel, Spain, UK, Greece and Italy. All SMARTechs are currently under operation, integrated in the existing assets. The technologies were in operation until M36 for their technical, environmental and economic optimization and long-term validation. The SMARTechs were used as main source of recovered raw material, that has been used to test SMART-Products to be addressed to different market applications.
The eligible technologies are also under validation of the ETV protocol.
Best available sensors and analysers for real time monitoring of energy consumptions and carbon footprint (WP4) have been installed and provided long-term data, used to feed (i) the predictive models and simulation platforms that will lead to a decision support tool for the integration of SMARTechs in a wide range of existing WWTPs within the European and global framework, (ii) Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing analysis.
In parallel, current landscape in terms of market and legislative barriers and opportunities was analysed in details and market scenarios and targets defined, to develop possible realistic exploitation strategies and business plan (WP5). The local value chains for the water sector, including main stakeholder and water pricing has been studied for the relevant EU and Extra-EU countries. Simulations on the impact of local mechanisms of water pricing on SMARTechs financial implications for water companies have been performed, with estimation of Investment Return Rate in relevant scenarios.
The SMART-Plant was strategically and successfully communicated (WP6) from the very beginning to reach out to society as a whole and being perceived as project actually delivering circular economy in municipal wastewater management.
The project results will be showcased to a broad audience of water stakeholders during the SMART-Plant final conference, that is currently being organized within IWA Resource Recovery Conference 2019, 8-12 September, Venice

Final results

According to the scope of the Horizon2020 Water-1-b call where SMART-Plant was funded, in only 18 months SMART-Plant has progressed beyond the state of the art by scaling up and integrating energy- and carbon-efficient technologies to recover cellulose, biopolymers, nutrients in 6 real medium and large real conventional wastewater treatment plants in Israel, Greece, Italy, Spain, Netherlands and UK.

SMART-Plant believes that water utilities can become engines for the circular economy if they overcome their widespread current scepticism to eco-innovations and resource recovery and reuse approach. Therefore, the integration and start-up of pilot and demo plants (the â€œSMARTechsâ€) in existing asset was carried out by engaging local water utility staff, that are so perceiving how resource recovery systems can gradually change the wastewater management paradigm without revolutionizing the existing asset and workload.

This joint undertake among water utility staff and innovators has continued within the long-term validation of the SMARTechs performances, and their validated (where eligible) by ETV.

For the first time the business models to close the recovered materials value chain were analysed with reference to different regulatory models for water tariff settings. Water price reduction has been estimated and will be considered in the social life cycle assessment, being expected to have a relevant role. The distributor model was preliminary estimated to reduce the risk of closing the value chain for the water utilities, but its impact is weaker on countries where the water tariff setting is more elastic. However, still the quality standard, regulation and legislation concerning secondary raw materials and recovered materials is the main barrier to market uptake.

The exploitable results of SMART-Plant could be summarized in 4 main areas:
1. SMARTechnologies (long-term validated energy- and carbon-efficient technologies to recover cellulose, biopolymers, nutrients)
2. SMART-Products (recovered raw and post-processed material)
3. Digital solutions (Decision support tool for the integration of SMARTechs in a wide range of existing WWTPs)
4. Policy support ( policy briefs, support to policy makers in embedding innovative circular approach in national and EU legislation - Innovation Deal on water reuse and for the revision of UWWTD, WFD, Urban Agenda for the EU, Quality Standard for Secondary Raw Materials, etc.)

The societal impact is also achieved through the successful dissemination and communication activity of SMART-Plant, that is contributing to change the citizens and stakeholders\' perception about the role of WWTP, to be seen as Resource Recovery Factories.