Collaboration Fund

The UK water companies are responsible for using 3% of the country’s energy with its associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and around 50% of this is used in collecting and treating wastewater. This wastewater is currently treated to high standards and discharged to watercourse. Yet a wastewater contains large quantities of recoverable resources. It has enough phosphorus to meet all our fertiliser needs for this element, together with 50% of our nitrogen needs. The carbon in wastewater can be reduced to methane and provide 50% of the energy for treatment and the treated wastewater can be reused for irrigation. However achieving this recovery economically requires a large, multi­disciplinary and co-ordinated team. It is the aim of this project to assemble and develop such a team across the three Universities that will prepare and submit a large research application to the EPSRC Signposted Awards in Water Engineering. The objectives to achieve this aim will involve: i) preliminary meeting of the six academic partners to discuss and agree the research strategy (£800); ii) visits to European Centres of excellence across the three strands that make up the application to ensure the European relevance of the application. These are the Delft University of Technology, Holland, the KIWA Research Institute Holland and the University of Aalborg (£6,600); iii) inception event inviting up to 30 Water/Waste Companies, consultants and contractors who may have an interest in collaboration and sponsorship of the project. This will involve lectures and breakout sessions to firm up the details of each three strands of the application and ensure the commercial relevance (£3,000); iv) Two final meetings of the six partners to prepare and agree the draft and final EPSRC submissions (£1,600).