In order to emulate wastewater compositions and varying influent loads typically encountered on cruise ships, a fully automated wastewater mixing and dosing station has been designed and built as part of the research project OSCAR. Since February 2022, the mixing and dosing station is providing the influent to the OSCAR ship wastewater treatment plant, which is in operation in ISAH’s test hall since early October 2021.
The wastewater mixing and dosing station allows to set specific concentrations of total COD, ammonium (or total nitrogen) and readily biodegradable COD in the influent wastewater. This is achieved by blending up to three different (liquid) substrates with the municipal wastewater of the wastewater treatment plant Hannover-Herrenhausen. One of the substrates is leftover beer from the nearby brewery, which contains a high amount of COD and also nitrogen. To reach the desired concentrations, the added amount of additional substrates is adjusted for each batch of wastewater based on real-time measurements. Up to 24 sequential target concentrations can be specified, e.g. to depict diurnal variations in terms of hourly values.
Being able to deliberately vary influent concentrations on a relatively short time scale allows to investigate how the biological wastewater treatment processes react to various dynamic influent conditions, with much greater flexibility than studies on-board actual ships can provide.
The experimental results will inform the formulation of operating strategies for cruise ship wastewater treatment, central part of which is the development of a “digital twin” (simulation model) of the wastewater-related systems.
For further information on the research project OSCAR see the project descriptiontypo3/ or visit the project’s homepage (in German): www.oscar-cloud.detypo3/
We would like to thank the Privatbrauerei Herrenhausen for providing the leftover beer.
