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August 2010 - present
January 2007 - April 2010
Publications
Publications (58)
Research on rainwater harvesting mainly focuses on a building scale. Scant information is available about its performance at large scale. This study aims to determine the potential for, and economic viability of meeting non-potable water demand by rainwater harvesting for a large scale case (21.5 km2): Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. A dynamic model wa...
As municipal wastewater treatment regulations become more stringent, integrating source-separated urine treatment into centralized urban wastewater management offers a ′hybrid′ solution. However, it is not clear how the environmental impacts of such hybrid systems compare to highly efficient centralized wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) with low...
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5048873
The intensification and specialization of global agriculture has led to a nutrient surplus resulting in regional environmental issues such as eutrophication and loss of biodiversity due to nutrient accumulation. Addressing these challenges requires a shift towards regional nutrient circularity, inspired by the principles of a circular economy, to c...
Nutrient circularity is an emerging concept that seeks to address the environmental problems and nutrient losses caused by agriculture and food consumption. The implementation of circular nutrient technologies and practices (CNTPs), that recover, reuse, and recycle nutrients from agricultural and urban waste is an important policy objective. Yet, w...
Circularity is a new paradigm of nutrient management that seeks to mitigate environmental impacts of agriculture by reducing nutrient losses through reuse. However, circular nutrient management is not a goal in itself, but rather a means of transition to sustainable food systems. We argue for a conceptually stronger and more explicit combination of...
Source separation and decentralized urine treatment can cut costs in centralized wastewater treatment by diverting 80% of the nitrogen load in sewage. One promising approach for nitrogen removal in this context is partial nitritation/anammox (PN/A), reducing the aeration demand by 67% and organics dosage by 100% compared to nitrification/denitrific...
Circularity is a new paradigm of nutrient management that is seeking to mitigate environmental impacts of agriculture by reducing nutrient losses through their recuperation and reuse. However, circular nutrient management is not an end goal in itself, but rather a means to a transition to sustainable food systems. We argue for a conceptually strong...
To provide for the globally increasing demand for proteinaceous food, microbial protein (MP) has the potential to become an alternative food or feed source. Phosphorus (P), on the other hand, is a critical raw material whose global reserves are declining. Growing microbial protein on recovered phosphorus, for instance, struvite obtained from wastew...
Our economy drives on reactive nitrogen (Nr); while Nr emissions to the environment surpass the planetary boundary. Increasingly, it is advocated to recover Nr contained in waste streams and to reuse it ‘directly’ in the agri-food chain. Alternatively, Nr in waste streams may be removed as N2 and refixed via the Haber-Bosch process in an ‘indirect’...
Lignosulfonate-based bioactive coatings as soil improvers for lawns were developed using laccase as a biocatalyst. Incorporation of glycerol, xylitol and sorbitol as plasticizers considerably reduced the brittleness of the synthesized coatings of marine carbonate granules while thermal enzyme inactivation at 100 °C enabled the production of stable...
Due to the high water- and nutrient-use efficiency, hydroponic cultivation is increasingly vital in progressing to environment-friendly food production. To further alleviate the environmental impacts of synthetic fertilizer production, the use of recovered nutrients should be encouraged in horticulture and agriculture at large. Solid organic fertil...
Resource recovery and reuse from domestic wastewater has become an important subject for the current development of sanitation technologies and infrastructures. Different technologies are available and combined into sanitation concepts, with different performances. This study provides a methodological approach to evaluate the sustainability of thes...
Production of struvite (MgNH4PO4·6H2O) from waste streams is increasingly implemented to recover phosphorus (P), which is listed as a critical raw material in the European Union (EU). To facilitate EU-wide trade of P-containing secondary raw materials such as struvite, the EU issued a revised fertilizer regulation in 2019. A comprehensive overview...
The transition to sustainable agriculture and horticulture is a societal challenge of global importance. Fertilization with a minimum impact on the environment can facilitate this. Organic fertilizers can play an important role, given their typical release pattern and production through resource recovery. Microbial fertilizers (MFs) constitute an e...
Consortia of aerobic heterotrophic bacteria (AHB) have potential as sustainable microbial protein (MP) source in animal feed. A systematic screening of the nutritional value and safety of AHB biomass from full-scale activated sludge plants from 25 companies in the food sector was performed. The variable protein content (21-49%) was positively corre...
Livestock production is utilizing large amounts of protein-rich feed ingredients such as soybean meal. The proven negative environmental impacts of soybean meal production incentivize the search for alternative protein sources. One promising alternative is Microbial Protein (MP), i.e. dried microbial biomass. To date, only few life cycle assessment...
Struvite is considered a source of recovered phosphorus, that can replace phosphate rock in the production of fertilisers. The ongoing revision of the fertiliser directive may enable the inclusion of struvite into the EU wide production of secondary raw material-based fertiliser. Evidence from the SUSFERT project indicates that 13 of the 14 struvit...
Purple non‐sulphur bacteria (PNSB) are phototrophic microorganisms, which increasingly gain attention in plant production due to their ability to produce and accumulate high‐value compounds that are beneficial for plant growth. Remarkable features of PNSB include the accumulation of polyphosphate, the production of pigments and vitamins and the pro...
Each ton of organic household waste that is collected, transported and composted incurs costs (€75/ton gate fee). Reducing the mass and volume of kitchen waste (KW)at the point of collection can diminish transport requirements and associated costs, while also leading to an overall reduction in gate fees for final processing. To this end, the object...
Intensive livestock farming cannot be uncoupled from the massive production of manure, requiring adequate management to avoid environmental damage. The high carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus content of pig manure enables targeted resource recovery. Here, fifteen integrated scenarios for recovery of water, nutrients and energy are compared in terms of...
This critical review outlines a roadmap for the conversion of chemical oxygen demand (COD) contained in sewage to commodities based on three-steps: capture COD as sludge, ferment it to volatile fatty acids (VFA), and upgrade VFA to products. The article analyzes the state-of-the-art of this three-step approach and discusses the bottlenecks and chal...
The research presented here examined at which spatial and temporal resolution urban metabolism should be analysed to generate results that are useful for implementation of urban planning and design interventions aiming at optimization of resource flows. Moreover, it was researched whether a lack of data currently hampers analysing resource flows at...
The ability of urban wastewater systems to adapt and transform as a response to change is an integral part of sustainable development. This requires technology and infrastructure that can be adapted to new operational challenges. In this study the adaptive capacity of urban wastewater systems is evaluated by assessing the interdependencies between...
Sustainable urban resource management depends essentially on a sound understanding of a city's resource flows. One established method for analyzing the urban metabolism (UM) is the Eurostat material flow analysis (MFA). However, for a comprehensive assessment of the UM, this method has its limitations. It does not account for all relevant resource...
Sanitation systems are built to be robust, that is, they are dimensioned to cope with population growth and other variability that occurs throughout their lifetime. It was recently shown that building sanitation systems in phases is more cost effective than one robust design. This phasing can take place by building small autonomous decentralised un...
Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are two essential macronutrients required in agricultural production. The major share of this production relies on chemical fertilizer that requires energy and relies on limited resources (P). Since these nutrients are lost to the environment, there is a need to shift from this linear urban metabolism to a circular m...
Sustainability is commonly assessed along environmental, societal, economic and technological dimensions. A crucial aspect of sustainability is that inter-generational equality must be ensured. This requires that sustainability is attained in the here and now as well as into the future. Therefore, what is perceived as ‘sustainable’ changes as a fun...
Research on rainwater harvesting mainly focuses on a building scale. Scant information is available about its performance on a large scale. This study aims to determine the potential for, and economic viability of meeting non-potable water demand by rainwater harvesting for a large scale case (21.5 km2): Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. A dynamic model...
The new urban metabolism – from cities as organisms to cities as ecosystems Cities are full of people! Cites are made by people, by the markets they visit, the transactions they make, their social interactions and their resource consumption. Every minute, every second someone, somewhere in the city eats a meal or visits the toilet to dispose an ear...
Innovations in technology and organisations are central to enabling the water sector to adapt to major environmental changes such as climate change, land degradation or drinking water pollution. While there are literatures on innovation as a process and on the factors that influence it, there is little research that integrates these. Development of...
Sustainable urban resource management gains importance due to ongoing urbanization. Cities increasingly show commitment to reduce their environmental pressure. Amsterdam, for instance, has the ambition to generate twenty percent more renewable energy per capita in 2020 than in 2013. To reach Amsterdam’s sustainability objectives, a detailed underst...
Urban water and wastewater systems face uncertain developments including technological progress, climate change and urban development. To ensure the sustainability of these systems under dynamic conditions it has been proposed that technologies and infrastructure should be flexible, adaptive and robust. However, in literature it is often unclear wh...
Voor een effectieve bescherming van beschikbare (zoet)waterbronnen is het opvangen en benutten van regenwater op regionale schaal noodzakelijk, evenals het vergroten van de regionale zelfvoorzienendheid. Deze studie op het terrein van luchthaven Schiphol laat zien dat regenwateropvang van verschillende oppervlakten haalbaar is, maar dat voor volled...
Voor een effectieve bescherming van beschikbare (zoet)waterbronnen is het opvangen en benutten van regenwater op regionale schaal noodzakelijk, evenals het vergroten van de regionale zelfvoorzienendheid. Deze studie op het terrein van luchthaven Schiphol laat zien dat regenwateropvang van verschillende oppervlakten haalbaar is, maar dat voor volled...
The treatment of agriculturally polluted water to potable standards is costly for water companies. Changes in agricultural practice can reduce these costs while also meeting the objectives of European Union (EU) environmental legislation. In this paper, the uptake of source control interventions (SCIs) by water and sewage companies in England and W...
This paper presents an assessment of how the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) is stimulating change in water and wastewater management. The paper aims to provide an organisational innovation contribution towards understanding the processes by which policy and legislation stimulate change in water and wastewater systems. Results were produce...
Improving the stimulation and management of innovation by water utilities is a key mechanism through which the challenges of securing sustainable water and wastewater services will be achieved. This paper describes the process of adopting source control interventions (SCIs) by water and sewerage companies (WaSCs) in England and Wales. SCIs can be d...
Urbanisations have a metabolism that converts inputs into outputs. Nowadays this metabolism is mainly linear, where resources are used mostly once and then discharged to the environment. Transitions towards more circular urban metabolism may increase resilience of urban systems and will be crucial for achieving environmental sustainability. In ecos...
Urbanisations have a metabolism that converts inputs into outputs. Nowadays this metabolism is mainly linear, where resources are used mostly once and then discharged to the environment. Transitions towards more circular urban metabolism may increase resilience of urban systems and will be crucial for achieving environmental sustainability. In ecos...
Water management is undergoing a transformation towards integration, source control and ecological thinking. In the EU, the Water Framework Directive can be considered as a driver towards this new approach to water management. Innovations are deemed necessary to deliver this ideal of water management. In this thesis efforts by water sewerage compan...
Using the example of raw water quality this paper examines the relationship between different spatial characteristics (geographical and physical properties) of Water and Sewerage Companies (WaSCs) supply and sewage areas and response to the Water Framework Directive. Results were obtained from thematic analysis and content analysis of 14 interviews...
