“Trust and Transparency,” that is the promise. I was snagged
by the Facebook Ad offer for a lecture by George Gilder on how the coming
revolution in digital technology would protect privacy, honor creativity, and
guarantee security, hence accomplishing “trust and transparency.” If I had two
words to describe what biosolids managers are missing most in their work with
customers, community, and regulators it is those very things - trust and
transparency.
I ordered for $13 Gilder’s book, Life
After Google. This was not much of a risk in my mind. After all, I had
intended to learn more about 5G, bitcoin, blockchain, and other terms that have
been entering the lexicon of savvy professionals. And if I could learn how to
achieve “trust and transparency,” $13 was worth the risk.
Wastewater professionals see themselves as the “hidden
infrastructure.” Compared to roads and bridges, that is true, but compared to
the digital infrastructure, we do not compare. Even the very digitally “woke”
among us are likely to see the digital infrastructure as opaque. Yet the scale
is beyond most imaginings, with a typically large data center a million square
feet, costing a billion dollars to build and requiring 100 MW of power. These
comprise not a culmination of technology investment, but a way station on a moving
sidewalk that has not slowed over the decades. That the “cloud” now shapes much
of the way even wastewater managers upload and download facility data, against
a recordkeeping approach that is keyboard-typed spreadsheets on desktops, the
next step may involve “sky” technology and a system of data reading that
bypasses human eyes, comprising “life after Google.” George Gilder’s book is an
introduction into the post data-center world, that of networked supercomputers,
laptops, and cellphones in vast, distributed relationships. Pulling these
together is "Distributed
Ledger Technology (DLT)," also known as Blockchain Technology. The “block”
in blockchain are "transaction blocks," information units that are
assigned a "cryptographic code" to which participants in the
transaction have secure access.
The global digital revolution has not greatly transformed
municipal wastewater treatment. But what might biosolids management look like
if a “Life after Google” type transformation took hold? Bitcoin is the most familiar transaction block
that is tracked by DLT, but what if a load of biosolids was just such a block?
Digital records of today’s biosolids processing and use are
not deliberately “chained” together. But what if we changed that? What if, with DLT, or Blockchain Technology,
the data we could collect at every step of the biosolids value-chain, from
influent, through the WRRF, out to the user and into the soil or energy
facility, were the input to Blockchain Biosolids records? A large, and
increasing, number of monitoring, reporting and verification data (MRV) could
be collected and “chained:” sensing influent quality, measuring nutrient and
pollutant concentrations, reporting processing statistics, tracking transportation
movements, documenting land applications, connecting to crop yields and soil test
results, matching to unmanned drone photos, estimating carbon sequestration, nitrogen
and phosphorus loadings to farm soils, and connecting to odor complaints. These
data could be used for complying with regulations, monetizing nutrient trading,
and meeting agronomic targets. Farther in the future, as wastewater systems
work to improve effluent quality, blockchain networks can be used to track, for
instance, the surveillance of pollutants in consumer products and pathogen
releases to sewage. The digital
revolution and data management through blockchain could empower treatment plant
owners to accomplish improved biosolids quality.
The first step on the Biosolids Blockchain is wastewater
quality. Wastewater surveillance is an upcoming digital technology that ought
to benefit the quality of biosolids. The 2019 WEFTEC paper “Effective
Utility Management in a Digital World“ speaks to a Memphis project with
”the opportunity to intervene on pollutants and to maximize the destruction of
pollutants and biological constituents.” The novel coronavirus has ensured a
place in popular culture for a growing interest in sensing influent pathogens (Computational
analysis of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 surveillance by wastewater-based epidemiology
locally and globally: Feasibility, economy, opportunities and challenges). But researchers
have targeted poliovirus (Evaluation
of Secondary Concentration Methods for Poliovirus Detection in Wastewater) and other compounds public health interest (24-hour
multi-omics analysis of residential sewage reflects human activity and informs
public health), such as illicit drugs, smoking prevalence and dietary
habits (e.g., Alcohol
and nicotine consumption trends in three U.S. communities determined by
wastewater-based epidemiology and in the Assessing the
Potential To Monitor Plant-Based Diet Trends in Communities Using a
Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE) Approach).
The second step of Biosolids Blockchain is treatment plant
performance. Digital technology promises a future of optimized effluent
treatment. It could be something apparently easy, such as Evaluating
the performance of a simple phenomenological model for online forecasting of
ammonium concentrations at WWTP inlets; this is a report
of an effort to optimize energy and chemical inputs for aeration and nitrogen
removal. WRRFs of the future could be
highly automated, monitored in real time and controlled remotely, as offered in
this article Augmented
reality, an ally in water treatment processes. The “holy grail” is a fully
integrated system for an entire plant, as envisioned in Artificial
Intelligence in Wastewater Treatment Facilities: Implementing Practical New
Technologies for the End User. Accenture
Water Analytics, IBM
Intelligent Water Platform and Veolia Water
Technologies Aquavista are three initiatives in the smart wastewater
space.
Two stops in the treatment plant seem to cry out for digital
enhancement of the biosolids “value chain.” The first is automated control of
stabilization, e.g., anaerobic digestion. Automatic
process control in anaerobic digestion technology: A critical review evaluated
available automatic control technologies that can be implemented in AD
processes at different scales, and other papers (Lessons
learnt from 15 years of ICA [instrumentation, control and automation] in
anaerobic digesters and Nonlinear
process control of anaerobic sludge digester) offered
cautious notes about the practicability of digitally-guided
operations, even as such tools as “proportional-integral-derivative (PID)
controls,” “fuzzy logic controls (FLC),” neural networks, and artificial
intelligence are applied. The second stop for digitally enhanced biosolids
“value chain” is dewatering. Optimal solids content in biosolids is an
interplay of feed quality, chemical inputs, and equipment settings to which
sensors and feedforward and feedback control logic can be applied. Three leading
offerings in this area are Valmet,
with its dry solids measurement equipment, Hach with
its RTC-SD (Real Time Controls for Sludge Dewatering), and RealTech
on sensors of excess polymer dosing.
Each point of data collection is a “block” in the chain of information
on biosolids quality.
After a Biosolids Blockchain record has taken in data on
influent quality, stabilization performance and dewatering, the next stop on
the value chain for data collection is transportation of biosolids loads to the
user or customer. Over the past decade, the vehicle
tracking system is nearly universally
adopted, providing origin and destination data of biosolids haulage, matching
weigh tickets issues at the production plant with records at the field.
Precision agriculture sets a high bar for digitalization of farming
operations. Documentation of field application of biosolids is the next step in
blockchain. John Deere introduced two
decades ago its GPS
guidance systems to record farm tractor operations, and the firm even has
the HarvestLab 3000 “manure
constituents sensing laboratories” outfitted on manure application
equipment to calculate in real time nutrient applications. An up-and-coming technology
is UAVs, or “unmanned aerial vehicles” that can check on nutrient needs, soil
conditions and equipment operations (see, for instance, The
Role of Drone Technology in Sustainable Agriculture.) At harvest
time, digital equipment can estimate crop yield, as with the John
Deere ActiveYield. Were digital
information collected at the farm site of biosolids spreading and crop
performance, this would be another block added to the chain, with the
connection between biosolids and crop growth objectively documented.
Biosolids recycling benefits soil, and blockchain can provide
the records demonstrating this benefit. The United States is an international
leader in creating digital
agricultural laboratories. Major
issues in agricultural use of biosolids, such as soil phosphorus accumulation,
pollutant concentrations and soil organic matter, are all subject to analytical
documentation through soil tests. Analytical reports of soil samples linked to
biosolids applications in time and location can be exported automatically from
the laboratory to the biosolids blockchain records. With this data record, the
blockchain is complete, from influent through to soil.
Global climate change is an urgent issue about which
biosolids managers can play a role, particularly if blockchain is part of rigorous
recordkeeping system from which biosolids managers work. This opportunity is offered,
for example, by green technology investment advisors in The Time is Now: The Blockchain Platform for
Carbon Offsetting, Green Financing and Sustainable Investments. Privately funded ventures propose deploying “value-chain
incentives” for carbon sequestration, as with the “deep demonstrations of
turning landscapes from carbon sources to sinks” described in About
Landscapes as Carbon Sinks. The rigor
of the blockchain data system can make this possible for the wastewater
profession, as it facilitates conformance by our industry to rigorous
procedures for carbon accounting. For instance, the Soil
Enrichment Protocol: Reducing emissions and enhancing soil carbon sequestration
on agricultural lands is nearing adoption by the Climate Action Reserve.
The wastewater profession’s capacity to collect data on
processes and practices has typically outstripped its capacity to draw out knowledge
and meaning from that data. The kind of digital revolution and “internet of
things” that has propelled Google and others to the world’s center stage has
widened the gap between our customary practices and the reasonable expectations
of our customers for how environmental technologies ought to work in a digital
world. The “trust and transparency” that seems to be missing in our
relationship with customers and neighbors is not an intentional strategy but
rather a failure to invest talent and resources in bringing digital technology
solutions to biosolids management. We need a digital revolution, and that
revolution can begin by Embracing Blockchain Biosolids.
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