Two of the important outputs planned to be produced in the IWAMA project are the energy and sludge audit concepts. The detailed content of those will be evolved in the process of performing the smart energy and sludge management audits by students at the IWAMA partner plants. With these audits, not only the plants can benefit from valuable data analysis of their operational performance, but also students joining this initiative can obtain exclusive experience. In IWAMA, we focus on generating the knowledge inside the project consortium: instead of hiring external companies to perform audits, we facilitate learning in the research communities of the region.
Four universities of the IWAMA partners are involved in the audits organized in the project framework: Technical University of Berlin (DE), University of Tartu (EE), Lahti University of Applied Sciences (FI) and Linnaeus University (SE). Before the audits started, each university had organized a selection process to attract students in the relevant field of studies.
Energy and sludge audits were launched during the week 6–10 February 2017 with a training provided by the partner universities and first site visits to perform the audit itself. The students participating in the process come from four countries, they specialize in water and wastewater management, engineering and environmental protection.
The first audits were performed in Szczecin, Poland: two plants had been visited to learn about the local wastewater treatment processes' peculiarities, measure energy consumption and collect sludge samples. Seven more plants from different countries of the Baltic Sea Region will host audits during this year.
Related
Article "IWAMA - audyty w oczyszczalniach" from the newspaper Wiadomości Szczecin is available in Polish.
