Course information

• Objectives

  After completion of the course you should be able to understand fundamentals of sulphate-reducing bioprocesses, microbiology, factors affecting conversions, etc. Particular focus is on sulphur-driven autotrophic denitrification and on SANI® process development, modelling and application. Sulphur conversion-based resource recovery makes part of this course too. You will get familiar with design procedures, practical examples of real-life applications, and experimental methods on sulphur-based conversions in activated sludge systems. Completing this course will enable you to apply advanced knowledge of sulphur-based wastewater treatment in both practical and research settings and learn about future perspectives in this exciting field.

• Syllabus

  This course covers the following topics:

  • Introduction to Sulphur-based Wastewater Treatment
  • The Sulphur Cycle
  • Sulphur-reducing Bioprocesses
  • Sulphur-oxidizing Bioprocesses
  • Resource Recovery
  • Case Study: SANI Process
• Delivery method

  This course is currently designed for a SELF-STUDY mode. It is FREE, and does not include guidance, support, exams, assessment, and certification. It is possible that shortly, the series (or its parts) will be adopted by institutions that may deliver the guided version, including certification. As soon as this is the case, it will be advertised on this website.

• Organization

  Courses in this series consist of video lectures, presentation slides, reading materials, exercises, and assignments with solutions. In principle, each video presentation has its complementary presentation slides. All videos are available for viewing in the section “Video-recorded presentations”. The materials are packaged in three (.zip) files, namely, the “Videos”, the “Presentations”, and the “Documents”. Files may be of considerable size, so you need to ensure that your computer has sufficient bandwidth and capacity for downloading. This course is based on the chapter in the book “Biological Wastewater Treatment: Principles, Modeling, and Design” 2nd edition (Chen et al., 2020). To check and expand your knowledge on the subject, it is recommended to study the corresponding chapter in the complementary book  “Biological Wastewater Treatment: Examples and Exercises” (Lopez-Vazquez et al., 2023). The two chapters are open access and available in the section “Documents (.zip) on this webpage. For those interested in related experimental methods, it is advised to consult relevant methods in the book “Experimental Methods in Wastewater Treatment” (Van Loosdrecht et al., 2016). The complete book and video-recorded experimentation are available on this website as a separate course (https://studybwwt.online/courses/experimental-methods-in-wastewater-treatment/).

• Open Access

  The content is available for free unlimited access and use, consistent with Global Sanitation Graduate School’s commitment to ensuring open access to information and knowledge. Please note that the video materials fall under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), presentations under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), readers (OA books of IWA Publishing) under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), and other readers under the license specified by the publisher. Although care has been taken to ensure the integrity and quality of these materials and information, no responsibility is assumed by the author(s), Global Sanitation Graduate School, or IHE Delft Institute for Water Education for any damage to property or persons as a result of the use of these materials and/or the information contained herein.