The Advanced Water Management Centre (AWMC) is an international centre of excellence in innovative water technology and management. During over ten years of research in this field, we have developed leading expertise in education, research and consulting.
The current water crisis has brought about a major shift in many aspects of the water industry in Australia, most notably in South-East Queensland. The imminent introduction of large-scale, high-quality water recycling including the provision of purified recycled water into our water supply represents a dramatic paradigm shift in urban water management systems. Traditionally we have been using a straight linear system for the water flows from collection, drinking water treatment and supply to wastewater collection, treatment and discharge with the strict separation of water supply and sanitation systems. The shift towards a true urban water cycle, both at a local and regional scale, poses numerous challenges and opportunities for the water industry as a whole.
Being a research institution, the AWMC thrives on both challenges and opportunities and we are indeed excited about the evolving changes particularly in the urban water context. We see our role expanding from the wastewater treatment process focus both up- and downstream. We have already a well established and highly successful research program in the sewer management area and the emerging reality of the sewer system becoming part of the overall water supply system will put more emphasis on the source management and control aspects in the urban sanitation system. Likewise, the emphasis of wastewater treatment is expanding rapidly from primarily an environmental protection focus such as nutrient reduction to a significantly increased treatment capacity for a range of contaminants of concern, with an amplified public health focus. Again, some of our current activities e.g. on the biological removal of organics from drinking water will be highly relevant in this changing urban water management situation.
Given the concurrently growing recognition of the global climate change threat and the close link to the energy generation and utilisation, our existing activities on energy recovery from wastewater are also gaining momentum rapidly. While not a complete solution to the looming energy crisis, the energy recovery processes provide a valuable and useful contribution to reducing the energy needs for wastewater treatment and recycling. Particularly the microbial fuel cell research work is developing at a phenomenal pace and our activities are contributing significantly to this development. This novel technology is shaping up as an ideal complementary alternative to the biogas producing anaerobic digestion processes since the microbial fuel cells seem most competitive in the small to medium size applications, also with dilute waste streams, while the anaerobic digestion processes are highly beneficial particularly in larger applications. Exciting new developments are happening in both areas.
Overall, the AWMC is well placed to benefit from the dramatically increased recognition of the importance of water in our society and we intend to make significant contributions to the many existing and emerging challenges in these stimulating times. We are in the process of substantially expanding our activities, both in breadth and depth, so that we can provide even more relevant and valuable research and development contributions to the Australian water industry in future. In doing so, we will also increase our collaborations with many other research organisations and industry partners since a close integration of a wide range of skills and expertise is required in this rapidly evolving new water management situation in Australia and worldwide. These are exciting times and we are keen to create a strong and internationally leading research capacity in advanced water management in Australia. We look forward to work closely with many partners on this in future!