The Ozonation Series – episode 1: Modelling ozonation: Why? What? How?

Written by

Wim Audenaert, CEO of AM-Team

Welcome to our new blog series: The Ozonation Series! If you’re interested in the ozonation topic, then these articles will be a treat.

Our first episode will discuss why modelling is an exciting option to explore when evaluating your ozonation process. There’s more to come, so stay tuned!

The growing importance of ozonation

Drinking water treatment, tertiary wastewater treatment, and (indirect) potable water reuse (IPR) are topics of major attention nowadays due to the rising (and interconnected) concerns about water scarcity and the presence of micropollutants (MP) such as pharmaceuticals and pesticides in the water. As a result, advanced tertiary treatments are increasingly adopted at water treatment sites to eliminate compounds with elevated biological resistance and produce safe water for human consumption.

Ozonation and (biological) granular activated carbon adsorption are becoming attractive technologies for MP removal and IPR. However, the extensive piloting efforts required to assess its application properly have hampered the full application potential of ozonation. Additionally, you need to consider bromate formation and other concerns when applying ozonation.

Why modelling ozonation?

Ozonation of secondary effluent for micropollutant removal is becoming more and more popular but comes with several challenges across the entire technology lifecycle.

Modelling ozonation provides a solution for these challenges:

It leads to significant time and cost savings as virtual simulations replace real-life piloting and expensive analyses. Simulations allow for cost savings of hundreds of thousands of euros and time savings of over a year. You can conduct one year of ‘virtual piloting’ in a matter of weeks.
It allows for unprecedented insights as modelling enables numerous virtual tests that are impossible to conduct in reality. Moreover, thanks to the high-resolution visualisations of critical variables - that you can’t measure in reality - coming out of the model, you’ll understand your processes better.

In the video below, you’ll discover the different stages where simulation modelling has an added value: from the feasibility study to designing and operating your ozonation plant.