Abstract
To achieve the Paris climate protection goals there is an urgent need for action in the energy sector. Innovative concepts in the fields of short-term flexibility, long-term energy storage and energy conversion are required to defossilize all sectors by 2040. Water management is already involved in this field with biogas production and power generation and partly with using flexibility options. However, further steps are possible. Additionally, from a water management perspective, the elimination of organic micropollutants (OMP) is increasingly important. In this feasibility study a concept is presented, reacting to energy surplus and deficits from the energy grid and thus providing the needed long-term storage in combination with the elimination of OMP in municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The concept is based on the operation of an electrolyzer, driven by local power production on the plant (photovoltaic (PV), combined heat and power plant (CHP)-units) as well as renewable energy from the grid (to offer system service: automatic frequency restoration reserve (aFRR)), to produce hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is fed into the local gas grid and oxygen used for micropollutant removal via upgrading it to ozone. The feasibility of such a concept was examined for the WWTP in Mainz (Germany). It has been shown that despite partially unfavorable boundary conditions concerning renewable surplus energy in the grid, implementing electrolysis operated with regenerative energy in combination with micropollutant removal using ozonation and activated carbon filter is a reasonable and sustainable option for both, the climate and water protection.
Highlights
Introduction and BackgroundTo achieve the Paris climate protection goals, there is an urgent need for action in the energy sector
Increasing cleaning performance compared to one-step processes: in comparison to a pure ozone or granulated active carbon filter (GACF) plant, both elimination mechanisms, oxidative degradation and granulated activated carbon (GAC) adsorption with their respective strengths are used for the removal of organic micropollutants (OMP)
Since PV plants are already installed on the appropriate roof areas at the buildings of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) Mainz, the additional PV will be installed via an innovative construction above the secondary clarifiers, resulting in a double use of a portion of the WWTPs area
Summary
To achieve the Paris climate protection goals (temperature rise < 1.5 ◦ C [1]), there is an urgent need for action in the energy sector. To accomplish that goal a rapid expansion of renewable energy generation capacities is needed and the provision of flexibility, long-term energy storage and energy conversion to maintain stable operation of the energy grids is essential This is mandatory to defossilize all sectors by 2040 [2,3]. From a water management perspective, the elimination of organic micropollutants (OMP) is of increasing importance. Both aspects can be combined and solved in a holistic manner. In some federal states a large number of WWTPs of different sizes have already been equipped with an advanced treatment step for the removal of OMP. In Europe, the most commonly used process technologies to remove OMP are ozonation or active carbon (AC) technologies [11,15]
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