The overall objectiveof this WP is finding the ecologically most sustainable and economically most feasible treatment systems for given wastewaters. The first concern is to avoid sub-optimisation, which in this case means to avoid a situation where operating a unit process at its optimum performance may have undesirable or even unacceptable consequences somewhere else in the process chain. The objective is to optimise systems, not individual unit operations. In order to do so, all peripheral operations must be considered, not just the treatment systems as such. For reaching the overall objective, two major objectives will be pursued: -To obtain holistic environmental and economic assessments of the treatment operations studied in the project by using the life-cycle-assessment and life-cycle-costing methodologies. -To assess the possibilities to integrate the investigated treatment concepts in industrial processes, possibly incorporating other treatment processes than those studied as well as relevant parts of the industrial processes which generate the wastewaters. The results of the work to reach the above objectives will be used to pursue a third objective: -To transfer new technologies to end-users, including other end-users than those participating in the project. The treatment of a wastewater is an industrial process just like other industrial activities. It consumes resources and generates wastes. It may and should thus be assessed according to the IPP concept, i.e. the consequences of upstream and downstream processes should be included. Upstream processes are the acquisition of the resources, downstream processes the treatment of the wastes and the recovery of valuable materials for open-loop or closed-loop recycling schemes. Such a holistic approach to the optimisation of wastewater treatment processes has previously been applied in the 5th FP project MAPP and in the 6th FP project HIPCON. In both projects the case studies were municipal wastewater treatment plants. In INNOWATECH this approach will be applied to the treatment of industrial wastewaters. Every industrial wastewater is unique. Therefore, in order to get the optimal treatment, with regard to effluent quality and environmental impact and cost, each treatment process for an industrial wastewater has to be individually designed and optimised (i.e., tailor made). In INNOWATECH advanced treatment processes for specific industrial wastewaters will be developed. However, the next step, the transfer of the treatment technology from the research state to the industrial state is also crucial for a successful final result. The goal is to make the final treatment process more efficient without being more complicated or more difficult to operate or more resource consuming or more polluting at other locations than the traditional processes, and therefore the transfer process itself together with the final adjustments and optimisations at site needs much attention. The number of full-scale process designs which may be studied and optimised experimentally, are for obvious reasons limited, as are the number of wastewaters which may be studied in that way and the possibilities to modify the upstream industrial processes for testing purposes. By using the assessment models developed during the work for the first objective and models of other processes not studied in the project, scenario calculations assessing various combinations of unit operations may be carried out. Relevant parts of the industrial processes generating the wastewaters may be modelled and included in the assessments in the same way. The assessments may also be extended to wastewaters not studied experimentally (second and third objective).
PUBLISHABLE-FINAL-ACTIVITY-REPORT
