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Wastewater | Sustainable Water Management

 

The CalAgua research team, consisting of staff from the UPV (Polytechnic University of Valencia) Environmental and Water Engineering Institute and the UV (Valencia University) Chemical Engineering Department, has been working for two decades on the integrated physical, chemical and biological processes that take place in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), i.e. the biological removal of nutrients, primary sludge fermentation, anaerobic sludge digestion, recovery of phosphorus in the form of struvite, the SHARON process using nitrite to strip nitrogen, membrane bioreactor applications for treating wastewater, and the use of micro-algae cultivation for removing nutrients.

 

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The main aims of this research group are to transfer research results to industry for immediate application and provide technical advice on the design, operating and optimization of water treatment plants. Most of the transferable results obtained by CalAgua have arisen from R+D projects financed by public funds and contracts with companies. This has enabled a variety of patents to be developed and marketed, including automatic calibration equipment for ASM model parameters (Biocalibra); a wastewater treatment (WWT) system using membranes; a WWT aeration control system based on fuzzy logic; and a nitrification-denitrification process control system.

CalAgua has also developed DESASS, a WWTP simulator software now used by several universities and companies. DESASS includes BNRM1 – the general model also developed by this research team – used to simulate full-scale plants taking into account the impact of the recirculation streams found in global treatment process, including water and sludge streams.

Software Desass 7.1


aguas residualesDESASS (Design and Simulation of Activated Sludge Systems) is a WWTP simulator for Windows intended for staff training and educational purposes. The simulator has been designed and optimized to simulate the main physical, chemical and biological processes involved in a WWTP.

BioCalibra


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BIOCALIBRA: is an automated calibration device developed by Calagua for determining the kinetic and stoichiometric parameters of the WWTP simulation models used most often by researchers.