New Waste Water Treatment
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is a big consumer of drinking water, especially the Terminal building which houses restaurants, hotels, offices, and shower and toilet compartments. The building supplies drinking water to the airplanes, cooling towers and other buildings as well. As part of Energy Strategy 2020 Schiphol Group has the ambition to use drinking water as efficient as possible. Next to this an environmental friendly waste water treatment is preferred for the future.
Approach
As a starting point the water cycle of the Terminal building will be studied in depth. Samples of the waste water will be analysed in the lab and the different functions of water supply will be investigated. There are already several examples of innovative waste water treatment in the Netherlands. Whether this would be suitable for Schiphol as well will become clear in the coming months.
Results
Schiphol Group would like to manage waste streams in a responsible way , using the Best Practices. At the same time the company puts much effort in energy saving measures and the production of sustainable energy. From the project it became clear that these two goals can be combined.
After investigation of the wastewater from the passengerterminal, it was concluded that the wastewater is very suitable for energy production and resource recovery. Therefore the most concentrated wastewater needs to be separated from the relative clean wastewater. This requires new infrastructure in de sewerage or toilet rooms. In the future minerals like phosphate or potassium will be recovered or biogas will be produced. By keeping toilet wastewater or urine separated big improvements can be realised in the fields of energy performance and impact on local surface waters.
Next steps to be taken are planning for new infrastructure and looking for a smart implementation. The aim will be to combine it with other projects on the airport like the algae wastewater treatment.
