Caused by the quick technological progress regarding online measurement of flows and loads in the wastewater sector, regarding modern process control and information processing as well as concerning simulation models for sewer systems, stormwater tanks and sewage treatment plants, which can be integrated into modern control systems, innovative possibilities arise for the improved operation of not only novel, but above all also of existing municipal sewage systems.

By integration of these advanced technologies, special synergy effects are usable. Thus, the combination of novel process control and automatic measurement technology leads to a substantial improvement of the whole operation which cannot be achieved by application of the respective technologies individually.

Large cities already have partially opened these new possibilities, e.g. for dynamic control of sewage systems under the use of available retention volumes, for the automation of the sewage treatment plant or, based on remote sensing, for the centralized hydraulic monitoring and control of stormwater tanks. However, smaller and medium-sized municipalities (which are affected by higher specific expenses anyway) have an especially high need, too. Often an integrating approach is missing, which involves the superior functional targets with the municipal reality under the consideration of the specific economic constraints.

The climatic changes currently to be ascertained, lead to clearly more dynamic of precipitation events. And so, the flexible and automatically adapting overall control of the drainage system becomes an important requirement for the future protection of our aquatic systems.

Within the scope of the current R&D project supported by the Federal State North Rhine-Westphalia, a new automation concept should be demonstrated for the consideration of the above mentioned boundary conditions by implementation of an innovative process control system for medium-sized municipalities, exemplarily illustrated by the drainage system of the City of Emmerich on the Rhine, Germany.

Project targets

As in many other municipalities, capital-intensive tasks of the City of Emmerich on the Rhine regarding the water pollution control (reorganization of the sewer system, optimization of the stormwater treatment, modernization of the sewage treatment plant) are anything but fully completed. At the same time the city, respectively the local wastewater utility Technische Werke Emmerich am Rhein GmbH (TWE), is under considerable cost pressure and by this confronted with the necessity to exhaust all possibilities by new and rational technologies to improve the cost efficiency of the sewage disposal in total.

By the pilot project, a robust and adaptive process control system should be developed, configured and tested as well as demonstrated. The transferability of the system should be analyzed taking into consideration the different conditions of sewage disposal at other places. The improvement potentials should be quantized from water-ecological, sewage-technical and economic view.

© Institute of Environmental Engineering and Management at the University of Witten / Herdecke gGmbH