Page 8 - trends in automation

The water bearer

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Cornel

is one of the world’s leading international experts in water

supply and wastewater disposal. In this interview with trends in automation he describes

how semi-centralised water treatment plants can achieve savings of up to 40 per cent

for drinking water. In the growing megacities of the world, the technological future for the

sustainable use of water is already being created.

Interview

About the person

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Cornel

Peter Cornel studied chemical engineering at the University

of Karlsruhe and graduated in 1983. He then studied at

Stanford University in California. After 14 years working

in international plant engineering, he is now Professor

of Wastewater Technology at the IWAR Institute at the

Technische Universität Darmstadt. Since 2005 he has

been an honorary professor at Qingdao Technical

University in China. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Cornel is one of the

world’s leading international experts in water supply and

wastewater disposal. Research institutions such as the

German Research Foundation (Deutsche

Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) and the Federal Ministry of

Education and Research as well as numerous scientific

journals rely on his knowledge and experience as an

expert. As well as holding senior positions on expert

panels and committees, Prof. Cornel is also a board

member of the German Water Partnership.

You are the Chair of Wastewater Technology at the TU

Darmstadt in Germany, you manage research projects, work as

an expert and co-editor of scientific journals and are represented

on the management board of many committees. What motivates

you?

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Cornel:

As a student of process engineering,

I was influenced by the severe water pollution that affected

Europe during the 1970s. At the barrages on the Main and Rhine

you could see huge mountains of foam. This was also the

time when the seeds of something approaching environmental

awareness were planted. What still motivates me today is

not the development of processes and devices – I see these more

as a means to an end – but rather nature and water conservation.

Having said that, I believe that we also have to be realistic

and accept the fact that rivers such as the Rhine, Main, Neckar

and others that are subject to heavy use no longer have the

same water quality as a pure mountain stream. The objective

should be to achieve near natural water quality that allows

multiple uses.

You talk about European experiences with water

conservation, are similar developments in the pipeline for

other countries?

Cornel:

Compared with many emerging economies, in Europe we

are several decades ahead when it comes to wastewater

technology and infrastructure. Developing countries have made

and are still making more or less the same mistakes that we

made back in the 1950s and 1960s, when the focus was on

economic growth. Look at Korea and the tiger economies during

the 1990s, for example. We are also witnessing the same thing

in China. Economic growth comes first and the environment

doesn’t become an issue until years later. Again and again, we

have noticed that environmental protection is almost always

driven by economic necessity rather than environmental

awareness. For example, if farmers complain that the river water

being used for irrigation is contaminated, this creates an

economic need to treat wastewater before it is introduced into

the body of water. The greater the degree of contamination, the

higher the costs for drinking water treatment for river water. It

is the economy, not ecology, that is the driving force here.

Can solutions that have been developed for Europe in

recent decades be applied directly to the Far East?

Cornel:

The problems facing developing countries are a lot

different to those we had and indeed still have in Europe.

Drinking water supply and wastewater disposal in rapidly

expanding megacities is a major issue. When I travelled

to Shanghai twenty years ago, the city had around seven million

inhabitants. Today there are between 17 and 22 million.

At the end of the 1990s, we discussed wastewater discharge

as well as the size and concept of the new wastewater

treatment plant with our colleagues from Tongji University.

The plant is now finished and as far as I am aware it is

the biggest in the world. However, nobody at the time could

have predicted this exponential population growth, and the

plant is no longer able to meet requirements.