SuPER-W

PHD student: Philipp Kehrein

SuPER-W proposes a paradigm shift for the European wastewater sector: “From wastewater treatment to resource recovery” which implies the development of processes that allow the re-usage of energy, organic matter, N, P, S, water, mineral salt and metals from wastewater streams (http://www.superw.ugent.be/). To make this transformation successful, a variety of innovative technologies need to become developed that  enable the recovery of various resources, from different wastewater streams, in numerous different geographic and cultural contexts.

The SuPER-W project trains 15 early stage researchers (ESRs) to optimise existing technologies and develop novel integrated solutions that drive forth product, energy and resource recovery from wastewater. Within this Joint Doctorate Programme, one of our PhD students (Philipp Kehrein) is working on topic “Supporting the design and development of more sustainable wastewater technologies and management strategies based on a resource recovery perspective”. The PhD project aims to examine how emerging innovative technologies can be harnessed to include wastewater streams into circular economy-related concepts like e.g. the urban metabolism concept. The project also aims to develop a conceptual framework that can provide guidance in the development of profitable, locally integrated and sustainable wastewater resource recovery strategies for a given urban area. Such framework shall lead to a strategic approach useful to re-integrate wastewater streams into urban material and energy flows; furthermore, the the conceptual framework should provide tools to assess the sustainability performance of selected strategies in order to be able to address potential bottlenecks before the implementation of actual measures begins.