Progress report for
BKT Tomorrow Water Project
Achievement at a glance
DOWNSTREAM- A pilot plant of PROTEUS+ that combines biological treatment and physical filtration has been installed and tested in ARTP(Anthony Ragnone Wastewater Treatment Plant) in MI, USA. It confirms that PROTEUS+ can treat five times faster than the conventional process.
- OPG is the ideal wastewater treatment technology for developing countries that maximizes energy potential. BKT has developed a control process that provides optimized growth conditions by controlling the mixing intensity according to light intensity. The control process has completed Korean patent registration and PCT application to countries such as the USA, India, and Vietnam.
UPSTREAM
- BKT is carrying out a $12 million government project to build a standard model for the most efficient and stable biogas facilities using food waste and wastewater sludge. It combines pretreatment, biogas plant, and reject water treatment(AMX).
UPCYCLING
- A study report using COWTT and FMX to extract keratin from hog hair, slaughterhouse waste, has been published in the SCI class journal ‘Waste Management’.
TRANSFER VALUE CHAIN
- To build a wastewater treatment plant, it takes a lot of efforts & resources, such as design, construction, operation, and maintenance, that requires budget, time, professional knowledge, and experience at each stage. Thus, BKT is paving the way for developing WATER AI(WAI) that can carry out the design and operation of sewage treatment facilities in much easier way, let alone more economically.
In addition to WAI-DESIGN(Design Automation) and WAI-OPERATION(Operational Automation), WAI will apply a CPS(Cyber Physical System) that simulates wastewater treatment based on real-time data to re-reflect and synchronize the predicted results from the virtual space into reality. It is expected to improve the operation and create a value of wastewater treatment plant in response to population growth, flow rate, and changes in influent characteristics.
Challenges faced in implementation
Wastewater treatment processes using algae tend to have limitations that require a large footprint to increase photosynthesis efficiency in general. However, the OPG process has the advantage of drastically improving sedimentation performance while using symbiotic relationships between algae and bacteria by elevating them vertically to shrink footprint compared to the existing algae process.By utilizing this characteristic, BKT produced an up-flow reactor in 2019 to overcome the limitations of the space and is conducting internal research to stabilize and commercialize the technology, including designing an OPG mass cultivation system.
Beneficiaries
Livestock farmer
Bugyeongyangdon Agricultural Cooperative, a cooperative established by hog farmers in Busan and South Gyeongsang Province, generates about 4,000m3/d of livestock waste, and about 100m3/d of sludge and slaughter waste. It can contribute farmers by improving the sanitary environment in the surrounding areas and generating additional profits from reducing the production cost of slaughter products.
Actions
COWTT(Thermal Hydrolysis Process), one of the unit technologies to maximize TWP energy production, has been applied to Bugyeongyangdon Agricultural Cooperative. The water content of sludge through COWTT, filter press, and dryer is less than 20%, and the sludge volume reduction rate is about 80%. As a result, Bugyeongyangdon Agricultural Cooperative can reduce its sludge treatment costs by more than 80% from USD 2million to USD 400,000 a year. COWTT can be applied not only as a sludge volume reduction process to save waste disposal costs but also as a pretreatment of anaerobic digestion to increase biogas production.BKT has experience and knowledge to provide optimal solutions to serve various needs for the customers.