The Waterboard Vallei & Veluwe and ELIQUO recently hosted a symposium with 40 representatives from 5 Dutch Waterboards to discuss lessons learned from building the innovative - energy autonomous and nutrient recovery - WwTP in Amersfoort (NL). The symposium provided a forum for the Waterboard and ELIQUO to share their experience with other utilities and stakeholders from the Dutch water sector, including various engineering consultancy firms.

Teamleader Jan Visser of the Waterboard shared openly his experience from operating the plant. Despite some initial ‘bumps on the road’ during the start-up phase, the Dutch Waterboard Vallei & Veluwe and ELIQUO shared technical presentations and operational data, which confirms that the plant is operating very well. The teams presenting were proud to share their experience.

The focus of the symposium was Thermo-Hydrolysis and the performance of LYSOTHERM®: ELIQUO’s proprietary thermal sludge hydrolysis technology. In addition, the superintendent from Waterboard of Lingen in Germany also shared his experience during the symposium from implementing LYSOTHERM®. An important conclusion during the day was that ELIQUO’s LYSOTHERM® is a proven technology, and due to its extremely low energy consumption as well as demonstrated high availability (>95%), ease of implementation and maintenance, the system is very competitive against traditional steam and chemical hydrolysis technologies.

In addition to sharing operational information and technical challenges, the participants also discussed important topics such as contractual cooperation and relationship management. To this end, another important conclusion from the discussions is that the contractual vehicle (Dutch equivalent of FIDIC Yellow Book) utilized for this project was not well suited to handle the innovative character of the project and limited the ability of the parties to agree on solutions for the unexpected circumstances during the start-up phase of the project.

At the end of the day, all participants of the seminar joined a round table to discuss the implementation of lessons learnt and improvements for the next generation of energy and nutrient initiatives. The feedback from the participants was that they very much appreciated the opportunity provided in this forum to share different perspectives with openness, courage and critical self-reflection from implementing such a complex and a very successful one.

Please contact our LYSOTHERM® experts if you would like to learn more about the system:

Maria Dittmann

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Tel:+49 751 359785-14