The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently added a new wastewater treatment module to its MEASUR software tool suite, a set of no-cost, open-source tools to help manufacturers and water agencies increase energy efficiency at the plant level and in specific systems. MEASUR helps industrial energy coordinators, plant managers, engineers, and maintenance personnel identify opportunities, monitor progress, and measure potential cost and energy savings.
Energy-intensive water and wastewater treatment processes, which include industrial-scale pumps, aeration fans, compressed air systems, motors, and other equipment operating around the clock, often account for 30-40% of all energy consumed by a town or city. MEASUR’s wastewater treatment module[1] allows operators to save energy by helping them simulate, analyze, and optimize their processes. This resource can also be of tremendous value to manufacturers who perform industrial water treatment in their plants.
Using basic process data and equipment information, the module can help water and wastewater treatment facilities determine:
- The oxygen requirements of their biological process
- The oxygen supplied by aeration equipment
- The quantity and cost of energy consumed by the aeration equipment
- The impact of using alternate operating strategies or systems to meet biological demands more efficiently
- The impact of alternate scenarios on system energy use and cost
In addition to the new wastewater treatment module, the MEASUR tool suite can analyze most major support systems found within manufacturing facilities, including pumps, fans, process heat, steam, and compressed air. Over the past several years, DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) extensively reprogrammed and updated MEASUR to make the set of tools more user-friendly, modern, and versatile.
MEASUR is accessible in an open-source environment and can be downloaded from the DOE AMO GitHub page. For information on additional AMO-supported software for industrial facilities, visit https://www.energy.gov/eere/amo/software-tools.
Water and wastewater treatment facilities, along with manufacturers and industrial organizations that perform wastewater treatment, can take advantage of additional resources through DOE’s Better Plants program, a voluntary leadership initiative that delivers technical assistance, facilitated peer-to-peer learning, and tools and resources. DOE also developed the Sustainable Wastewater Infrastructure of the Future (SWIFt) initiative to help water resource recovery facilities accelerate a pathway toward sustainable infrastructure.
—
This announcement first appeared in a message from the DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office on July 15, 2021.