KEYS – Steinhardt continues BMBF research in China 

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of two research projects fund­ed by the Min­istry for Edu­ca­tion and Research (BMBF), Stein­hardt has now received con­fir­ma­tion of par­tic­i­pa­tion in a fol­low-up project, KEYS. The project active­ly sup­ports the devel­op­ment of Ger­man smart tech­nolo­gies for appli­ca­tion in China’s Sponge City scheme.

The Leib­nitz Uni­ver­si­ty in Hanover and the con­sor­tium of part­ner com­pa­nies are design­ing equip­ment specif­i­cal­ly for local con­di­tions in the Chi­nese cap­i­tal Bei­jing as well as in the boom­ing metrop­o­lis of Shen­zhen. The pilot projects will offer sus­tain­able solu­tions that can also be applied to oth­er sites in China. 

In Bei­jing, for exam­ple, drain chan­nels along high­ways are being reac­ti­vat­ed as seep­age troughs for stormwa­ter to be cleaned using inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy. A demon­stra­tion plant for par­ti­cle sep­a­ra­tion is in devel­op­ment, adapt­ed to the local cir­cum­stances.  The process tech­nol­o­gy of the Stein­hardt HydroME­SI is the mod­el on which the design is based and devel­oped accord­ing to onsite require­ments. In Beijing’s new gov­ern­ment dis­trict the project team is con­struct­ing a high-grade treat­ment cen­tre with inflow struc­ture, coarse sep­a­ra­tion, flow reg­u­la­tion, depo­si­tion, fil­tra­tion and equal­is­ing basin. The force of grav­i­ty is the dri­ving force, no exter­nal pow­er source is necessary.

The design will use the local topog­ra­phy to reduce, delay and cas­cade out­flows in order to pre­vent flood­ing in the low­er regions of the city. A “Chi­nese” HydroSlide flow reg­u­la­tor has been devised tak­ing into account the dif­fi­cult local con­di­tions, which include short but heavy mon­soon rain­fall, crit­i­cal ero­sion, the deposit­ing of plas­tic waste, garbage, etc. at sur­face lev­el as well as in the sewage sys­tem itself. To get to grips with the not incon­sid­er­able chal­lenge alter­na­tive hydraulic dis­charge schemes are being exam­ined; one exam­ple of which is a com­bi­na­tion of HydroSlide and HydroStyx, where the tech­nol­o­gy is based on a suc­ces­sion of dis­charge brakes with com­put­ed open­ings and cascading.

The total bud­get for the new KEYS project amounts to € 137K, the work is set to begin in August 2018.