Challenge

Aquafin operates more than 300 plants for the treatment of household wastewater, spread throughout Flanders, thus contributing to good water quality in Flemish waterways. Aquafin is also committed to carrying out its core activities as sustainably as possible.

Every year, Aquafin's treatment plants produce a certain amount of biological sludge that comes from the treatment process. This sludge is converted to dewatered sludge via a centrifuge. Currently, the centrifuge operates semi-automatically. The operator is present only during the start-up of the centrifuge, but the sludge may change composition during the day, possibly requiring adjustments. By not being able to measure continuously, it is currently not possible to start observing changes and thus make the necessary settings/adjustments. As a result, much efficiency is lost.

The intended innovation should allow dewatering via centrifuge to run continuously at "optimal settings. This will reduce the tons of dewatered sludge, and will also allow more efficient use of chemical additives. Smartificaton of the centrifuge further results in a lower workload for the technical staff / operators. Specifically, a solution was developed to automatically adjust the settings of the centrifuge, based on data from online measurements from the input and output of the centrifuge. A smart controller can then make adjustments in such a way that the centrifuge can run / operate optimally.