Research center CEIT-IK4 has been the co-leader of the Diamond project, aimed at developing an advanced data management system for urban wastewater treatment plants. The system has been successfully tested at three facilities in Spain, Finland and Sweden.

The goal of this effort is threefold: to treat water so that it can be reused, to produce electricity from the sludge generated during the treatment process, and to recover nutrients which may be employed as agricultural fertilizers.

The Diamond project, which was co-led by the CEIT research center, provides wastewater treatment facilities with an advanced IK4 data management system that can improve their operational functionality.

Until now, these plants faced serious difficulties when it came to optimizing their operations due to the avalanche of data that they received. In some cases this data was incomplete, redundant or even unintelligible. This new system collects data through a network of sensors and provides information about water flows, temperatures, levels of dissolved oxygen and other substances, water levels and placement in a facility’s tanks, information about laboratory samples and other factors.

The system collects all of this information, analyzes and corrects it, completes the data if necessary and finally draws conclusions for those operating the facility in order to allow them to make informed decisions at all times. Treatment center managements thus have real time and complete information about how the plant is functioning.

The system has been successfully tested at three wastewater treatment plants, in the Spanish province of Guipúzcoa, Finland and Sweden.