A novel energy balance tailored for wastewater systems

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a novel energy balance scheme tailored for assessing energy efficiency in wastewater systems. It provides a consistent method to calculate the energy components associated with wastewater transport processes, allowing the quantification of the main water-energy inefficiencies. Three assessment levels are described (macro, meso and micro-level), depending on available information and scope. This balance allows a holistic approach of wastewater systems energy efficiency, including the system layout, losses in pipes/manholes, energy associated with undue inflows, exceedance volumes and energy recovery. The energy balance is applied to realcase studies. The energy associated with undue inflows represents from 20% to 44% of the external energy, with low average efficiencies of wastewater pumping systems (34%) and inflow intrinsic energy representing 64% of the total energy. This energy balance supports the performance diagnosis and the development of energy efficiency improvement measures.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy balance
• energy efficiency
• pumping stations
• wastewater systems

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of FCT, PhD fellowship PD/BD/135587/2018. The authors thank the following utilities for providing data: Águas do Algarve, Águas do Norte, INOVA, Águas da Serra and SMAS de Sintra.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2022.2035409

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the PhD fellowship Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia PD/BD/135587/2018.