Filtration First: A Smarter Way to Treat Wastewater
Revolutionizing wastewater treatment, is it possible?
Yes, step by step, with smart upgrades. One of the first impactful actions we can take is applying filtration before wastewater enters the treatment plant.
Filtration is a physical separation process that removes suspended solids by passing water through a fine mesh or porous material. Unlike traditional sedimentation, which uses gravity to settle particles, filtration captures solids immediately, offering faster and more efficient removal.
This technique can be applied either as primary treatment or as a polishing step after biological processes, depending on the plant’s design.
⚙️ Rotating Belt Filters (RBFs)
Modern technologies like Rotating Belt Filters (RBFs) are game changers. These systems use a continuously moving fine mesh belt to trap particulate matter while water flows through. With efficaceous results:
- Small footprint
- High Total Suspended Solids (TSS) removal (up to 50–80%)
- Ultra-low energy demand (~0.01–0.05 kWh/m³)
💡 Why Filtration Matters
RBFs do much more than filter water, they unlock smarter, more sustainable treatment strategies. By delivering a cleaner, clarified stream:
- They enhance further fermentation processes for the production of volatile fatty acids (VFAs)
- They reduce organic load on secondary treatment → lower aeration energy
📉 Economic and Environmental Benefits
For utilities aiming to transform from energy consumers to biofactories, RBFs represent a smart, future-ready investment. Expected impacts:
- Up to 15% reduction in energy use
- Lower sludge disposal costs (saving €0.5–€2.7 per people equivalent/year)
- Short payback period, thanks to reduced operational costs
- Increased profitability per plant
This is the first step in REFRAME’s vision for change: “Let’s stop thinking of solids removal as a dead-end process. Let’s use it as a gateway to value creation.”
️Particularly, in our project filtration enables optimized recovery of bioproducts like:
- Internal carbon sources for nutrient removal
- Precursors for PHA (bioplastics) or Single Cell Proteins for animal feed
👉 Look out our next article on the subsequent processes that enable REFRAME to obtain high value bioproducts from the cellulose recovered in the filtration step.
Sources: Liu, R., Li, Y., Zhang, M., Hao, X., & Liu, J. (2022). Review on the fate and recovery of cellulose in wastewater treatment. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 184, 106354.; Khan, M. N., Lacroix, M., Wessels, C., & Van Dael, M. (2022). Converting wastewater cellulose to valuable products: A techno-economic assessment. Journal of Cleaner Production, 365, 132812.
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