Articles

Berlin Centre of Competence for Water (KWB)

www.kompetenz-wasser.de

The Berlin Centre of Competence for Water (Kompetenzzentrum Wasser Berlin gGmbH, KWB), is an international non-profit public private research center on urban water systems. The shareholders are the world leading company for water supply and sanitation Veolia, the largest German water utility Berlinwasser, and the Senate of Berlin. The main mission consists of the planning and the execution of R&D projects, and the dissemination of project results together with the organization of conventions and symposia. The KWB has a staff of about 30 full-time persons, active in projects mainly related to water resource management and innovative water and wastewater treatment technologies.

Since its creation in 2001, KWB initiated and conducted several studies related to leading edge technologies for wastewater treatment, resulting in more than 200 publications (journals and conferences). Since few years, KWB has been conducting a research program on energy and nutrients recovery in wastewater systems, embodied by the projects CODIGREEN, CARISMO, P-REX, and HTC-CHECK. KWB has also developed specific expertise on Life Cycle Assessment of urban water concepts and applied this expertise in projects such as SCST (LIFE), OXERAM2, CODIGREEN, P-REX, DEMEAU, and DEMOWARE. KWB is specialized in the management of research projects and is certified since 2010 under Quality Management System according to DIN EN ISO 9001:2008 that guarantees professional project management procedures and the maximum quality level of all our activities. KWB has extensive experience with European projects, and is corporate member of the International Water Association (IWA), the European Sustainable Phosphorus Platform (ESPP), and the Water Supply and Sanitation Technology Platform (WssTP).

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SMART-Plant scales-up in real environment eco-innovative and energy-efficient solutions to renovate existing wastewater treatment plants and close the circular value chain by applying low-carbon techniques to recover materials that are otherwise lost.

Seven plus two (7+2) pilot systems were optimized for more than two years in real environment in five municipal water treatment plants, including also two post-processing facilities. The systems were automatized with the aim of optimizing wastewater treatment, resource recovery, energy-efficiency and reduction of greenhouse emissions. A comprehensive SMART portfolio comprising biopolymers, cellulose, fertilizers and intermediates were recovered and processed up to the final commercializable end-products.

Dynamic modeling and superstructure framework for decision support was developed and validated to identify the optimum SMART-Plant system integration options for recovered resources and technologies.

The integration of resource recovery assets to system wide asset management programs were evaluated in each site following the resource recovery paradigm for the wastewater treatment plant of the future, enabled through SMART-Plant solutions. The project proved the feasibility of circular management of urban wastewater and environmental sustainability of the systems, through Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing approaches as well as the global benefit of the scaled-up water solutions.

Global market deployment was achieved as right fit solution for water utilities and relevant industrial stakeholders, considering the strategic implications of the resource recovery paradigm in case of both public and private water management. New public-private partnership models were also explored connecting the water sector to the chemical industry and its downstream segments such as the construction and agricultural sector, thus generating new opportunities for funding and potential public-private competition.