Wastewater overflows in connection with heavy rainfall and flooding pose a significant challenge for countries around the world. With the help of Calejo's hybrid AI technology, these serious environmental impacts can be completely avoided.
The uncontrolled leaks, which particularly affect rapidly urbanizing urban and densely populated municipalities and cities, usually consist of untreated wastewater that leaks directly into the environment via stormwater or from incomplete pipe systems.
Several global studies have shown that more than half of the total nitrogen load from domestic wastewater risks leaking into the environment without treatment, which greatly affects the water quality of receiving watercourses. The studies also show that only a little over a third of the nitrogen load from domestic wastewater is usually treated at treatment plants, while the remaining emissions occur directly into nature without being registered in national monitoring. This means that the official emission figures generally greatly underestimate the actual environmental impact of emissions.
“Precipitation is of course a strong influencing factor for leakage. Cities with higher precipitation have significantly larger volumes of environmental emissions, which indicates that combined sewage systems and overflows during heavy rains are important causes of leakage. During high precipitation, overflows increase significantly”, says Carl Johard, CMO at AI company Calejo Smart Water.
Controlling the pumps
Several case studies in Sweden have shown that it is possible to address these serious environmental problems and completely stop overflows by using Calejo's hybrid AI technology to optimize and automatically coordinate and control the waterworks' pumping stations and pumps.
- Initially, we usually build a digital twin of the sewage network, where we analyze real-time data and water flows and then proactively optimize pump control and thereby prevent untreated wastewater from being released. Calejo’s technology ensures a more even flow to the treatment plants, which improves their efficiency, says Carl Johard.
The use of the Calejo technology also reduces electricity consumption.
- Through optimized pump operation, energy consumption is reduced, which significantly lowers operating costs. The big upside for municipalities, however, is that they can completely avoid or at least postpone expensive and costly investments in infrastructure projects in the form of new pipelines and unnecessary equalization reservoirs, concludes Carl Johard.
