The principle of the conventional activated sludge (CAS) for municipal wastewater treatment is primarily based on biological oxidation by which organic matters are converted to biomass and carbon dioxide. After more than 100 years’ successful application, the CAS process is receiving increasing critiques on its high energy consumption and excessive sludge generation. Currently, almost all municipal wastewater treatment plants with the CAS as a core process are being operated in an energy-negative fashion. To tackle such challenging situations, there is a need to re-examine the present wastewater treatment philosophy by developing and adopting novel process configurations and emerging technologies. The solutions going forward should rely on the ways to improve direct energy recovery from wastewater, while minimizing in-plant energy consumption. This book begins with a critical overview of the energy situation and challenges in current municipal wastewater treatment plants, showing the necessity of the paradigm shift from removal to recovery in terms of energy and resource. As such, the concept of A-B process is discussed in detail in the book. It appears that various A-B process configurations are able to provide possible engineering solutions in which A-stage is primarily designed for COD capture with the aim for direct anaerobic treatment without producing excessive biosludge, while B-stage is designated for nitrogen removal. Making the wastewater treatment energy self-sustainable is obviously of global significance and eventually may become a game changer for the global market of the municipal wastewater reclamation technology. The principal audiences include practitioners, professionals, university researchers, undergraduate and postgraduate students who are interested and specialized in municipal wastewater treatment and process design, environmental engineering, and environmental biotechnology.

Sewage Treatment Plants: Economic Evaluation of Innovative Technologies for Energy Efficiency aims to show how cost saving can be achieved in sewage treatment plants through implementation of novel, energy efficient technologies or modification of the conventional, energy demanding treatment facilities towards the concept of energy streamlining. The book brings together knowledge from Engineering, Economics, Utility Management and Practice and helps to provide a better understanding of the real economic value with methodologies and practices about innovative energy technologies and policies in sewage treatment plants.

The focus of Water-Energy Interactions in Water Reuse is to collect original contributions and some relevant publications from recent conference proceedings in order to provide state-of-art information on the use of energy in wastewater treatment and reuse systems. Special focus is given to innovative technologies, such as membrane bioreactors, high pressure membrane filtration systems, and novel water reuse processes. A comparison of energy consumption in water reuse systems and desalination will be also provided. Water-Energy Interactions in Water Reuse covers the use of energy in conventional and advanced wastewater treatment for various water reuse applications, including carbon footprint, energy efficiency, energy self-sufficient facilities and novel technologies, such as microbial fuel cells and biogas valorisation. It is of real value to water utility managers; policy makers for water and wastewater treatment; water resources planners, and researchers and students in environmental engineering and science. Editors: Valentina Lazarova, Suez Environnement, France, Kwang-Ho Choo, Kyungpook National University, Korea, Peter Cornel, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany

Clean Energy and Resource Recovery: Wastewater Treatment Plants as Bio-refineries, Volume 2, summarizes the fundamentals of various treatment modes applied to the recovery of energy and value-added products from wastewater treatment plants. The book addresses the production of biofuel, heat, and electricity, chemicals, feed, and other products from municipal wastewater, industrial wastewater, and sludge. It intends to provide the readers an account of up-to-date information on the recovery of biofuels and other value-added products using conventional and advanced technological developments. The book starts with identifying the key problems of the sectors and then provides solutions to them with step-by-step guidance on the implementation of processes and procedures. Titles compiled in this book further explore related issues like the safe disposal of leftovers, from a local to global scale. Finally, the book sheds light on how wastewater treatment facilities reduce stress on energy systems, decrease air and water pollution, build resiliency, and drive local economic activity.As a compliment to Volume 1: Biomass Waste Based Biorefineries, Clean Energy and Resource Recovery, Volume 2: Wastewater Treatment Plants as Bio-refineries is a comprehensive reference on all aspects of energy and resource recovery from wastewater. The book is going to be a handy reference tool for energy researchers, environmental scientists, and civil, chemical, and municipal engineers interested in waste-to-energy. - Offers a comprehensive overview of the fundamental treatments and methods used in the recovery of energy and value-added products from wastewater - Identifies solutions to key problems related to wastewater to energy/resource recovery through conventional and advanced technologies and explore the alternatives - Provides step-by-step guidance on procedures and calculations from practical field data - Includes successful case studies from both developing and developed countries

This is a book for those operating and studying biological wastewater treatment plants. It introduces the state-of-the-art in process systems analysis (modelling and simulation, monitoring and diagnosis, process control and instrumentation) and in particular its application to wastewater treatment. While the emphasis is on biological nutrient removal, there is discussion of anaerobic treatment, and the principles apply to any treatment process. For the computer literate there is also a collection of MATLAB programs and functions that are mentioned throughout the book. They will run on both the professional and student editions of MATLAB Version 5. Contents Modelling Plant Dynamics, Basic Modelling, Advanced Modelling Empirical or Black-Box Models, Experiments and Data Screening, Principles of Parameter Estimation, Fitting and Validating Models, Simulators Diagnosis Diagnosis - an Introduction, Quality Management, Model Based Diagnosis, Knowledge Based Systems Control Goals and Strategies, Disturbances Manipulated Variables, Feedback Control, Model Based Control, Batch Plant Control, Plant Wide Control, Benefit Studies Instrumentation Primary Sensors, Analysers Actuators and Controllers The Future

In an era of abundance, at least part of humanity has stopped thinking about the future provision of basic vital resources such water, energy and food. Storage actions, with all their variants whether real or imagined, are sources of innovation in the provision and treatment of crucial resources. This book deals with cases of water, food, energy and biodiversity storage as a response to a new era of scarcity. Examining multilevel storage policies, consumers’ practices and local organisations, author Giorgio Osti explores a variety of examples such as the need to stock agriculture produce, the industry and practices of food conservation, the role of artificial water basins in controlling floods and droughts and the development of batteries able to compensate for the intermittence of renewable energy sources. Storage and self-sufficiency can be achieved in many technical ways, at different territorial levels and according to different policies or philosophies. Being more a grasshopper or an ant - the two extreme positions - depends not only on the technologies available but also on different analyses of the environment and different attitudes to the future. This book offers an environmentalist perspective that uncovers hidden or absent activities of ultramodern societies that will be useful to students of environmental sociology as well as those researching and studying at the interface of environmental studies and geography.

Any realistic response to climate change will require reducing carbon emissions to a sustainable level. Yet even people who already recognize that the climate is the most urgent issue facing the planet struggle to understand their individual responsibilities. Is it even possible to live with a sustainable carbon footprint in modern American society—much less to live well? What are the options for those who would like to make climate awareness part of their daily lives but don’t want to go off the grid or become a hermit? In Live Sustainably Now, Karl Coplan shares his personal journey of attempting to cut back on carbon without giving up the amenities of a suburban middle-class lifestyle. Coplan chronicles the joys and challenges of a year on a carbon budget—kayaking to work, hunting down electric-car charging stations, eating a Mediterranean-style diet, and enjoying plenty of travel on weekends and vacations while avoiding long-distance flights. He explains how to set a personal carbon cap and measure your actual footprint, with his own results detailed in monthly diary entries. Presenting the pros and cons of different energy, transportation, and lifestyle options, Live Sustainably Now shows that there does not have to be a trade-off between the ethical obligation to maintain a sustainable carbon footprint and the belief that life should be fulfilling and fun. This powerful and persuasive book provides an individual-level blueprint for a carbon-sustainable tweak to the American dream.

"I've seen many books on this subject, but none so well documented and honest."—Whole Earth

For 200 years industrial civilization has relied on the combustion of abundant and cheap carbon fuels. But continued reliance has had perilous consequences. On the one hand there is the insecurity of relying on the world's most unstable region - the Middle East - compounded by the imminence of peak oil, growing scarcity and mounting prices. On the other, the potentially cataclysmic consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels, as the evidence of accelerating climate change shows. Yet there is a solution: to make the transition to renewable sources of energy and distributed, decentralized energy generation. It is a model that has been proven, technologically, commercially and politically, as Scheer comprehensively demonstrates here. The alternative of a return to nuclear power - again being widely advocated - he shows to be compromised and illusory. The advantages of renewable energy are so clear and so overwhelming that resistance to them needs diagnosis - which Scheer also provides, showing why and how entrenched interests and one-dimensional structures of thinking oppose the transition, and what must be done to overcome these obstacles.The new book from the award-winning author of THE SOLAR ECONOMY and A SOLAR MANIFESTO demonstrates why the transition to renewable energy is essential and how it can be done.

A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.