As a PhD fellow, I am involved in research projects in the field of resource recovery from wastewater treatment plants, including recovery of resources and nutrients in the form of valuable final product. My PhD project is funded by RECOVER project (2016-2020), and my supervisor is Prof. Stein Wold Østerhus. Before starting my PhD study at NTNU, I received my B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in chemical engineering in 2009 and 2011 followed by 5 years working experience.

My PhD project includes experimental investigations which will be linked to a pilot scale enhanced biological phosphorous removal based on continuous MBBR. The main goals are to enhance nutrient recovery and to produce market competitive P products together with 1) economic considerations and 2) integrated resource recovery including water reuse, nutrient recycling, and energy recovery.

Xiaodong Wang, PhD student in Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU).

The PhD works within the frame of RECOVER project are mainly focus on modelling and data mining of sewerage system to achieve online optimization of wastewater treatment and resource recovery process. The hourly, daily, and seasonal variation of the influent of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and climate changing effects bring difficulties for the operation of processes. By combing statistical learning and dynamic modelling of the process, it is possible to develop surveillance and control approach to reduce operational cost and optimize the process.

Molecular methods are becoming more readily available for the field of wastewater engineering. Within the RECOVER project, we would exam the microbial diversity composition of biological wastewater treatment system. The ambition of this PhD works within RECOVER project is to find the relation of microbial diversity and operational conditions. Coupled with the molecular data and process knowledge, better modelling approach of wastewater treatment and resource recovery process can be further developed.

One of the barriers of applying advance control to optimize WWTP operation is that some of the online sensors are two expensive and lack of reliability. Another barrier is lack of applicable process models to achieve model predictive control (MPC). This work is also intended to develop soft sensor method and modelling approach to overcome these challenges.

Abaynesh Belay Fanta is a PhD Research Fellow at the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) since January 2017. 

The overall aim of this PhD research is to investigate the challenges and opportunities encountered while operating a continuous moving bed biofilm reactor to remove phosphorus from municipal wastewater using a sequence batch moving bed biofilm reactor as investigation tool. The research also aims to investigate the metabolic shifting of microbial community, and to generate relevant scientific information about the process performance and stability under different operational conditions.

About Abaynesh

Abaynesh studied her first masters as part of EU-funded Joint Erasmus Mundus Master’s programme in Quality of Analytical Laboratories in 2009/2011. She spent her first year (course work) at Gdansk University of Technology, Gdansk, Poland and 6 months of Master’s Research at University of Bergen and Norwegian Institute of Nutrition and Seafood Research. She has done her second Master’s in Environmental Science and Technology at UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, The Netherland in 2012/2014. Abaynesh also worked as a lecturer and laboratory technician at Arba Minch University and Hope College of Business Science and Technology in Ethiopia. Recently, she is doing her PhD study in Biological wastewater treatment process, in Particular Biological Phosphorus removal from municipal wastewater, at NTNU under RECOVER project

As it has been accepted by the professional communities related to the wastewater treatment  industry, the traditional Wastewater Treatment has shifted its focus to Resource Recovery from the pure pollutants removal from wastewater. Therefore, Wastewater Treatment Plants(WWTPs) has changed to Water Resource Recovery Facilities(WRRFs).  In this content, domestic wastewater can be regarded as the new mines of the useful resources, such as phosphorus, carbon and some other valuable sources, for the sustainable development or the recycle economics.  As one of the primary goal of this project, phosphorous recover is needed in the domestic wastewater treatment process. However, an enrichment step is necessary before the phosphorus can be recovered in a biologically usable form. To achieve P-rich sludge which can be recovered afterwards, we are now working with a continuous biofilm phosphorous removal system.  Due to the shift of the concepts and the different goal, microbiology community composition and the biological chemical reaction related kinetic parameter might be changed. A good understanding of that information will improve the better control of the resource recovery and the optimisation of the system.

Chunbo He's work is now focusing on the biological kinetic studies and microbial community analysis under the new concept of resource recovery. The study is aiming to have a better understanding of the biological chemical reaction and the integration with simultaneous phosphorus recovery and nitrogen removal. Then a better control of the resource recovery strategy is expected.