Reduce the emissions of nitrous oxide from wastewater treatment

A cross-industry initiative has been created to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from Swedish wastewater treatment.

Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas that is formed as a by-product and intermediate in enhance biological nitrogen removal in wastewater treatment. Emissions of nitrous oxide from municipal wastewater treatment are probably the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the municipal water and wastewater sector. The size of emissions from industrial wastewater treatment and municipal leachate treatment is more uncertain. Previous studies show that nitrous oxide emissions vary greatly during and between years and the conclusion is that emissions need to be measured continuously in order to be able to estimate and reduce emissions.

According to the EU’s new Wastewater Directive, nitrous oxide emissions from municipal wastewater treatment plants over 10,000 person equivalents must be monitored and greenhouse gas emissions from wastewater treatment must be reduced.

In municipal wastewater treatment, purchasing measuring equipment and implementing emission-reducing operating strategies is a very cheap measure to reduce the climate footprint from wastewater treatment.

Nitrous oxide measurements, together with other operating parameters, generate a lot of data that needs to be processed in order to develop emission reduction measures and operating strategies.

Initiative

We want to create a cross-industry collaboration to jointly reduce nitrous oxide emissions from wastewater treatment in Sweden by
i) spreading knowledge about nitrous oxide formation
ii) highlighting, improving and developing new measurement methods
iii) creating and implementing AI tools to guide treatment towards lower emissions