A case study on the environmental and economic impact of photovoltaic systems in wastewater treatment plants

Ibn Tofail University of Kenitra, Morocco, is committed to a national policy of control and mobilization of water resources and the adoption of a planning approach and integrated water management. Within this framework, the university, which contains 40,000 students, produces a quantity of wastewater of 200 m3 per day. After treatment, the water is used for watering the university’s green space. The treatment process chosen is a membrane bioreactor (MBR), which is considered to be energy intensive. Therefore, the production of energy for the station will be made by renewable energy wind and photovoltaic (PV). The dimensioning of the MBR was made by a research department, which estimated that the energy necessary for the station is 1061.76 kW h/day. The aim of this work is to dimension and optimize the platform for the production of energy, using the Matlab program for the wind turbine and the PVsyst program for PV. The results of coupling our plant with an on-grid PV system and wind turbine show that it was able to reach an electrical coverage of about 72% of the wastewater treatment (WWT) plant’s energy needs. Thus, an estimated reduction of electricity of 0.53 euro on each m3 of water produced by the WWT plant and thus 106.76 euro on the 200 m3 produced daily by the station.