The Department for Resource Efficient Wastewater Technology, funded and promoted by the Carl Zeiss Foundation, was established on the 1st of January of 2016 and focuses on wastewater as a resource.
The focus of research lies on the development and improvement of concepts, processes and technologies to recover manifold valuable constituents from wastewater and to use of the energy and nutrient potential contained therein, while simultaneously removing problematic substances such as phosphorus, micropollutants and microplastics. Main research topics include water recycling, greywater treatment, recovery of nutrients as fertilisers, recovery of carbon as bioplastics, anaerobic technologies, energy optimisation of wastewater treatment plants etc. Interdisciplinary cross-sectoral approaches, e.g. with energy and agriculture fields, have been adopted in order to promote a transition from a sole waste management towards a sustainable resource management with regards to water, wastewater and energy.
In 2017 the Departments for Resource Efficient Wastewater Technology (rewa), Urban Water Management (siwawi) and the Centre of Innovative Wastewater Treatment Technologies (tectraa) were merged to the Institute for Water Infrastructure Resources (WIR) at the University of Kaiserslautern.
