Diving into the campus’ wastewater

The pilot plant is composed of two anoxic tanks equipped with agitators and three aerated tanks by disk diffusers, followed by a secondary settling tank. It is here that microbial ecology plays its role by degrading pollution with remarkable efficiency. Photo: Louise Leblanc

Real-size industrial equipment allows water engineering students to combine practical and theoretical training without leaving their building.

The pilot plant is composed of two anoxic tanks equipped with agitators and three aerated tanks by disk diffusers, followed by a secondary settling tank. It is here that microbial ecology plays its role by degrading pollution with remarkable efficiency. Photo: Louise Leblanc

Article from the journal Le Fil, Nov. 9, 2017

By Pascale Guéricolas

Few people know this, but the Adrien-Pouliot pavilion is home to a pilot wastewater treatment plant in its new section. Its function? Enable students and researchers to have access to a unique training and research tool that processes the wastewater of a hundred or so campus users in real time. Administered by modelEAU, the Canada Research Chair on Water Quality Modeling research group led by Peter Vanrolleghem, this $ 2M infrastructure was put in place in 2015. The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) has made a significant contribution.

"It's often forgotten, but wastewater treatment saves more lives around the world than medical care," says Peter Vanrolleghem, director of modelEAU. Passionate about technologies that minimize pollution as much as possible, this professor of water engineering entirely designed the pilot plant himself. The pilot facilities are very similar to many of the wastewater treatment plants around the world, with one difference: the set of tanks, pumps, sensors and control strategies have the capacity to evolve. In other words, the pilot plant’s flexible structure can integrate other state-of-the-art technologies in the near future.

Installed in a vast room, two basins of 6 m3 accommodate 24 hours a day wastewater from the Agathe-Lacerte Building and two daycares on campus. While a large portion of solid waste goes directly into the sewer system of the City of Quebec, sewage begins a ballet at variable speed, depending on the speed of the pumps. "Students can change the water temperature, the oxygen level, the time the water stays in the system for treatment, all from a distance through the automation of the system. This allows them to observe the influence of different factors on microbial ecology, "enthuses Peter Vanrolleghem, staring at a bubbling brown foam.

Master student in water engineering since January 2017, Romain Philippe has never had the chance to work with equipment of this size during his studies in environmental engineering in France. He discovered the pilot plant during an internship at Université Laval. Subsequently, the French student began graduate studies under the direction of the director of modelEAU. "My research focuses on the quality of the data collected by the pilot plant," explains the young man. Effective means must be found to quickly detect the slightest sensor failures. When I return to France, I think that the experience gained here will allow me to stand out in the job market. "

Gamze Kirim, a PhD student, also hopes to benefit from the work on the pilot plant once she returns home to Turkey. Engineer in industrial design, she is interested in different ways to optimize the energy devoted to water treatment. "You can reduce the energy required, but also produce biogas from sludge produced by the plant, for example," notes the girl. The use of certain liquids from wastewater allows, for example, a Swiss manufacturer to market nitrogen as a fertilizer. This is an experience not so far removed from the one conducted at the pilot plant. Indeed, the wastewater treated by modelEAU no longer contain this substance, unlike those that pass through the facilities of the City of Quebec.

"From now on, we are no longer talking about wastewater treatment plants, but about water resources recovery facilities, or WRRF", explains Peter Vanrolleghem. Elsewhere in the world, the use of digesters to treat sludge facilitates the production of methane supplying the heating of buildings, while the filtered toilet paper can be transformed into cardboard. For the moment, the water treated by the pilot plant of the Adrien-Pouliot Building leaves at the end of the cycle towards the municipal network. One could however imagine that one day the gardeners will use them to water the flowerbeds of the campus or that the sludge will be treated on the spot. Already, the director of modelEAU dreams of this 2nd phase of the pilot plant.