Neve to invest huge amount to upgrade operations

Napapiiri Energy and Water (Neve) is set to invest 4.3 million euros in the Alakorkalo wastewater treatment plant in Rovaniemi in the coming years to make it more effective, improve its reliability, and promote its development.

The focus of the investment will be on reducing nitrogen and phosphorous emissions. The goal is to further reduce the burden on the water basin and to meet stringent environmental regulations, sources at Napapiirin Energia ja Vesi Oy said.

“Our aim is to find ecologically and economically sustainable treatment for municipal sludge,” Neve Director of Circular Economy and Environment Satu Pekkala told the Daily Finland.

This year and next, Neve plans to build an aeration line, a secondary treatment line, and a disc filtering system.

The efficiency of the disc filtering system on waste phosphorous will rise to 95 per cent since 2020 onward. The total cost of these investments is approximately 3 million euros.

In addition, a process is being implemented in the wastewater treatment plant to burn the sludge and to granulate the resulting ash into a fertilizer product. This way, the phosphorous in the sludge, which can be a valuable fertilizer component, will be collected, instead of being a burden on the ecosystem, and many harmful substances, such as narcotics ingredients, can be prevented from passing through the sludge into the ecosystem.

Heat from the combustion will be used in the district heating network. This investment has received 1.27 million euros from the Environment Ministry. Altogether, the investments total at about 4.3 million euros.

The planning of the sludge burning plant has already started this year.

The largest plan is to invest in nitrogen removal through the integrated fixed film activated sludge (IFAS) wastewater treatment process. Currently, the technology associated with nitrogen removal is developing very fast, which obviously affects the efficiency and investment costs of the process.

The requirement for nitrogen removal is likely to be included in the coming environmental regulations, but there is not yet any data on limit values or cleaning power.

The current technology investments are estimated to be about 10 million euros. The aim is to invest in the hygienisation of water leaving the plant through, for example, UV treatment.

In connection with wastewater purification, waste heat is also generated, which is to be recovered in the future through a heat pump. The magnitude of this investment depends largely on the size of the heat pump to be used.