• 主题:IWA Science Summit for Urban Water
  • 时间:July 13-17, 2014
  • 地点:Harbin, China
Significance of this summit:

Recently, the urban water environment problems in world became extremely complicated due to the rapid urbanization and large population, which has become one of the critical bottle-necks restricting the sustainable development of cities. In the past, cities were designed by scraping off the local ecologic systems and replacing them with mostly hardscape and some green space occupied by non-native species. Along the way, we essentially followed the Romanesque design for urban water systems, i.e., big-pipe thinking, in which big pipes supply water to cities and carry out wastewater and stormwater from those cities. While big-pipe thinking has served our urban centers very well in the past, this water management system and water treatment technologies evolved when the energy and water resources were abundant. However, the population of the world increased by more than 3.75 times from 20th to 21st century, which has resulted in limited water resources, and increased use of fossil fuels for energy production. During this difficult period where global economies are struggling, population growth is continuing to increase, formerly predictable water resource conditions are changing, and energy costs for supplying and treating drinking water and wastewater are rising, communities are facing tremendous challenges to meet the growing water demand in an affordable way. This calls for a substantial change in the design of urban water systems, in general, and water infrastructure and its interactions with other urban systems, in particular. Hence, advanced and innovative technologies on water treatment, water body remediation, resource and energy recovery from waste materials has become urban demands.
There is an additional issue, summed up by Bruce Rittmann when asked, “What is the future of wastewater?” Dr. Rittmann replied, “It does not have a future.” What he meant is that we cannot afford to think of wastewater as waste. We need to think of it as a resource. It contains valuable nutrients (phosphate and nitrogen) and energy. In the long term, we can use energy to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. It is an atrocity that we use more energy to remove nitrogen from wastewater. Considering that there is limited minable phosphorous, we cannot afford to not to recover it (taking into account that 20% of our needs as a fertilizer can be recovered from wastewater). In addition, depending on the treatment method, there is more than enough energy in the wastewater to treat it, and wastewater treatment plants could become net power producers.
Focus on the above problems existing in the urban water system, we anticipate an exciting and high-level academic event, where, world famous scientists, water experts, researchers, companies, technology developers and decision makers will join together to exchange ideas and expertise in trouble shooting, novel technologies, and future demand in the changing environment for urban water. We truly believe that this summit will provide us latest achievements and brain-storming ideas in this field.
The themes of the Summit are:
  • The Science Summit 2014 could include the following topic:
  • Biorefinery using AD as a core technology, either for biogas or for bio-material et al
  • or Biorefinery using wastes as substrates, either for biogas or for bio-material et al
  • Biodegradation of organic and inorganic persistent pollutants
  • Energy Saving Technologies for Sewage and Industrial wastewater
  • Microbial Electrolysis Systems
  • Nutrient Recovery Issues
  • Urban Water and Energy Nexus
  • Environmental, Economical and Climate Changes
Contact:
Tao Li