Wilhelm of the Emde

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Wilhelm von der Emde, 2017

Wilhelm von der Emde (born May 14, 1922 in Kassel ; † February 19, 2020 in Baden / Vienna ) was a German-Austrian civil engineer . He was significantly involved in the development of the activated sludge process for biological wastewater treatment in sewage treatment plants and the establishment of an infrastructure for the purification and disposal of municipal and industrial wastewater. Another field of his diverse activities also included the training of operating personnel for wastewater systems. He initiated the establishment of appropriate training networks and contributed to their organization in a leading position. His work provided central principles for water protection and for the maintenance or improvement of water quality.

Life

Interrupted by military service, Wilhelm von der Emde completed his studies at the Technical University of Hanover from 1940 to 1948, specializing in civil engineering. From 1949 to the end of 1952 he worked in the engineering office of Dietrich Kehr, from 1953 to 1958 assistant and chief engineer at the Institute for Urban Water Management at the Technical University in Hanover (Head: Dietrich Kehr), where he received his doctorate on July 10, 1957.

In his dissertation, he summarized the current status of the methodology for dimensioning wastewater treatment plants and described a new procedure that is still used today in a slightly modified form to calculate the oxygen consumption and excess sludge production in activated sludge plants.

In the following years (1958–1964) he worked as the head of the sewage treatment plant department at the city drainage system in Hamburg. Overlapping (from 1960 to 1964) he worked as a lecturer at the Technical University of Braunschweig and from April 1961 also gave lectures at the Technical University of Delft. During a stay in England (Manchester), he personally met William T. Lockett, one of the inventors of the activated sludge process. Lockett and Edward Ardern invented the stimulation process based on the work of Gilbert John Fowler in 1914 .

In 1960, at the suggestion of the World Health Organization ( WHO ) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ( OECD ), with the participation of the TU Delft and the Netherlands Universities Foundation for International Cooperation ( Nuffic ), the "European Course in Sanitary Engineering", today IHE Delft ( UNESCO-IHE ) launched. Wilhelm von der Emde was a full-time lecturer at this research and educational institution from 1962 until he accepted the call to the Vienna University of Technology (today: Vienna University of Technology ) in 1964 . There he founded the Institute for Water Supply, Wastewater Treatment and Water Protection (today: Institute for Water Quality and Resource Management), which he headed from October 1, 1964 until his retirement on October 1, 1987.

Services

During his work at Hamburg City Drainage , he played a key role in the planning of the Köhlbrandhöft sewage treatment plant , the first large-scale plant with high-load biology. In the late 1960s, Wilhelm von der Emde and Rolf Kayser (who later held the chair for urban water management at the TU Braunschweig ) planned the Blumental sewage treatment plant in Vienna, which went into operation in 1969. This system received great international attention, as it was one of the first large-scale systems in the world that was able to largely remove not only organic contaminants, but also nitrogen compounds in the same basin. Also essential parts of the functional concept of the later main sewage treatment plant in Vienna , which went into operation in 1980 and was expanded in 2005, are based on the work of Wilhelm von der Emde.

Von der Emde recognized very early on that the goals of water protection can only be achieved if pollution from industrial wastewater is largely avoided. Under his leadership, the institute therefore dealt intensively with the purification and disposal of wastewater from leather, pulp and sugar production and the chemical industry, which was responsible for a significant part of the pollution of water bodies in Austria. In the process, new methods of wastewater treatment were developed, from laboratory tests to the operation of large-scale systems. A typical example of this is the process developed in the 1980s for the purification of wastewater from citric acid production by the Jungbunzlauer company in Pernhofen (Lower Austria). The central part of this problem solution is the anaerobic pre-cleaning of the concentrated wastewater, which takes place in an upward-flowing sludge bed reactor with a rotary distributor (EKJ reactor). This device was also patented in 1983 together with his successor at the Vienna University of Technology, Helmut Kroiss .

In the area of ​​river basin management, Wilhelm von der Emde researched the relationship between wastewater treatment and water quality. In practice, the results led to improved water protection and a considerable increase in water quality, not only in Austria. For example, the “Danube Expertise”, the content of which led to the “Danube Ordinance”, which legally anchored biological wastewater treatment in Austria. The work done by Wilhelm von der Emde and his team in relation to combating and preventing the eutrophication of water bodies was also exemplary . The focus here was on avoiding the introduction of phosphorus into Lake Constance and Lake Neusiedl. The suggested and implemented measures were extremely successful and are internationally recognized as a milestone in the field of water protection.

Wilhelm von der Emde was a co-founder and board member of the International Water Association (IWA) and held a leading position in many bodies and committees of this organization (e.g. Specialist Group on Design, Operation and Costs of Large Wastewater Treatment Plants). At what was then the Technical University of Vienna (now TU Wien), the “Workshop on Design - Operation Interactions at Large Treatment Plants” took place in September 1971, which he organized and led. It was the first conference on this topic of the IWA, which is now active worldwide (then still: International Association on Water Pollution Research, IAWPR). Wilhelm von der Emde also worked for the DWA ( German Association for Water Management, Waste Water and Waste , formerly ATV - Abwassertechnische Vereinigung). There he headed, among other things, the ATV technical committee 2.6 "Aerobic biological wastewater treatment processes" (later name: DWA technical committee KA-6 "Aerobic biological wastewater treatment processes"). With its significant participation, this committee developed the ATV-A 131 (1991) rule sheet, in which the technical rules for selecting the most appropriate methods for carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus elimination in wastewater treatment plants and for dimensioning the essential plant parts and facilities are compiled. On the basis of this set of rules, international sewage treatment plants from a size of 5,000 population equivalents have been dimensioned, planned and built.

In addition, Wilhelm von der Emde was committed to training qualified specialists for sewage treatment plants on a national and international level. He played a leading role in setting up today's training program for the Austrian Water and Waste Management Association (ÖWAV) for specialists in the field of wastewater management.

Awards and honors

Works (selection)

  • Wilhelm vd Emde (1957): Contribution to experiments on wastewater treatment with activated sludge , self-published by the Institute for Urban Water Management of the TH Hannover, Hannover,
  • Wilhelm vd Emde (1964): The technology of ventilation in activated sludge systems (incl. Discussion) , Swiss Journal for Hydrology, XXVI, 338–370
  • Wilhelm vd Emde (1964): 50 Years of Sludge Activation Process - The History of the Activated Sludge Treatment - History of the Activated Sludge Process , gwf Wasser Abwasser, 105 (28), 755-760
  • Wilhelm vd Emde (1971): Wastewater ponds, activated sludge processes, digestion processes , 6th ÖWWV seminar “Industrial waste water ”, Raach, March 29 - April 2, 1971, Wiener Mitteilungen 6, M1–43
  • Wilhelm vd Emde (1999): History of wastewater collection and discharge (The history of wastewater collection and discharge) , ATV Publishing, Hennef

literature

  • Roland Berger, Friedrich Ehrendorfer (Ed.): Ecosystem Vienna, The natural history of a city , Böhlau-Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-205-77420-4
  • David Jenkins, Jiri Wanner (Eds.): Activated Sludge - 100 Years and Counting , IWA-Publishing, 2014, ISBN 978-1-78040-493-6 .
  • Correspondence waste water, waste: personal details, Wilhelm von der Emde 95 years , KA, 2017 (64), 5, p. 436

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm von der Emde  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Baden District Gazette , 4./5. March 2020, p. 49.
  2. ↑ William vd Emde: Post to try for wastewater treatment with activated sludge , self-publishers of the Institute of Environmental Engineering of the Technical University of Hanover, Hanover, 1957
  3. ↑ Edward Ardern, William T Lockett: Experiments of the oxidation of sewage without the aid of filters , Journal of the Society of Chemical Industries, (1914) 33, 523-539
  4. ↑ Wilhelm vd Emde: The sewage treatment plant Vienna-Blumental , Österr. Water Management 23 (1971) 11-18
  5. ↑ Norbert Matsché: The elimination of Nitrogen in the Treatment Plant of Vienna-Blumental , Water Research 6 (1972) 485-486
  6. ↑ William vd Emde: Thoughts on the extension of the main sewage treatment plant Simmering , Austria. Wasserwirtschaft 38 (1986), 198-207
  7. ↑ Hellmut Fleckseder: Contribution to the purification of waste water from sulphite cell pulp production , dissertation 1973, TU Vienna
  8. ↑ Helmut Kroiss: A contribution to the purification of sugar factory wastewater , dissertation 1978, TU Vienna
  9. ↑ Helmut Kroiss: Anaerobic wastewater treatment , Wiener Mitteilungen, Volume 62, Vienna, 1988
  10. ↑ Patent DE 3324072 C2 Device for anaerobic wastewater treatment (1983)
  11. ↑ Wilhelm vd Emde, Hellmut Fleckseder: Basic concept on the water quality of the Austrian Danube route - water quality economic developments, objectives and requirements , report written on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of the Republic of Austria, Vienna, December 1975
  12. ^ Notification of the Federal Minister for Science and Research of November 18, 1981 (Zl. 61.481 / 32-17 / 81) about the resolution (Zl. 113914), TU Wien Archive, personal file Wilhelm von der Emde
personal data
SURNAME Emde, Wilhelm von der
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Austrian hydraulic engineer
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel
DATE OF DEATH 19th February 2020
Place of death Baden (Lower Austria)