Eawag - Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

The research focus of the Process Engineering Department (ENG) ranges from current and future wastewater and drinking water treatment problems, as well as water pollution control and resource reuse. Our long-term goal is to develop sustainable concepts of the water and nutrient cycle in residential areas.

ETH Rector Günther Dissertori presents Valentin Faust with the 2024 Otto-Jaag Water Protection Prize (Photo: ETH, Alessandro Della Bella).

November 18, 2024 –

During ETH Day on 16 November 2024, environmental engineer Valentin Faust was awarded the Otto-Jaag Water Protection Prize for his doctoral thesis. His work provides important insights about the production of fertiliser from human...

During ETH Day on 16 November 2024, environmental engineer Valentin Faust was awarded the Otto-Jaag Water Protection Prize for his doctoral thesis. His work provides important insights about the production of fertiliser from human urine.

The use of treated municipal wastewater to irrigate agricultural land has been permitted in some of Switzerland’s neighbouring countries since 2023 (Photo: Adobe Stock).

October 17, 2024 –

With climate change, hot and dry summers are becoming more frequent, causing water shortages in some regions of Switzerland. Reusing treated wastewater could help to solve this problem. This has been demonstrated by an Eawag team...

With climate change, hot and dry summers are becoming more frequent, causing water shortages in some regions of Switzerland. Reusing treated wastewater could help to solve this problem. This has been demonstrated by an Eawag team on behalf of the FOEN and some cantons. The researchers also explain what still needs to be done to put the option into practice.

The Jenfelder Au residential area in Hamburg is the largest residential area in Europe that has been managing its wastewater in local small-scale cycles since 2017 (Photo: Ulrich Perrey / HAMBURG WASSER).

August 13, 2024 –

Cities need to become more sustainable and use their water resources more efficiently. Managing water in small-scale cycles is one possible solution. A new white paper shows how this can be achieved.

Hu, Y., Morgenroth, E., & Jacquin, C. (2025). Online monitoring of greywater reuse system using excitation-emission matrix (EEM) and K-PARAFACs. Water Research, 268, 122604 (13 pp.). doi:10.1016/j.watres.2024.122604, Institutional Repository

A currently increasing interest in water reuse is met with the concern about water quality. Excitation-emission matrix (EEM) measurements, which are widely implemented in laboratory analysis, emerge as a promising tool for characterizing both microbial and chemical water qualities in the online monitoring of water reuse systems. However, the robustness of EEM measurements has been rarely validated in actual online monitoring campaigns where predictions are made for new samples independent of those used to establish EEM analysis models, including the popular parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC). In this study, two strategies of conducting PARAFAC were examined for the online monitoring of a greywater reuse system using two EEM datasets from two monitoring periods for model establishment and model testing respectively. With the first strategy that is commonly used in laboratory analyses, an entire EEM datasets from one period was used to establish one PARAFAC model, and the maximum fluorescence intensity (F_max) of a PARAFAC component was used to predict total cell count (TCC) in another period. However, under the disturbance of dissolved organic matter (DOM) fluorescence in the background, F_max gave unreliable predictions in model testing. To address this problem, a second and novel strategy was proposed using an EEM clustering and PARAFAC component shift mining technique. This unsupervised algorithm, named K-PARAFACs, automatically groups EEMs into K clusters and on each cluster establishes a cluster-specific PARAFAC model with distinct component shapes. With this method, multiple PARAFAC models were established on one EEM dataset, with each model representing samples with certain TCC ranges and DOM compositions. In model testing, these cluster-specific PARAFAC models served as EEM classifiers. A new sample was not characterized by F_max but by the cluster-specific model that best fitted the EEM signal of the sample with the least numerical error. The proposed strategy demonstrates its robustness by successfully predicting the TCC trend in test datasets. Our findings suggest that K-PARAFACs is a promising tool that enables robust qualitative monitoring of water reuse systems with background DOM variability.

Rothwell, K. A., ThomasArrigo, L. K., Kaegi, R., & Kretzschmar, R. (2025). Low molecular weight organic acids stabilise siderite against oxidation and influence the composition of iron (oxyhydr)oxide oxidation products. Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts (13 pp.). doi:10.1039/d4em00363b, Institutional Repository

Akert, F., Aebischer, P., Udert, K. M., & Reidy, B. (2024). Aurin, ein Dünger aus menschlichem Urin im Praxistest auf Sportrasen. Rasen: Turf: Gazon: European Journal of Turfgrass Science, 55(1), 16-21. , Institutional Repository

Binz, C., Sedlak, D., O’Callaghan, P., Truffer, B., Nesi, M., Morgenroth, E., … Wellauer, S. (2024). Mainstreaming decentralized urban water management solutions for sustainable cities. doi:10.55408/eawag:33039, Institutional Repository

12.02.2025,

2.00 pm

Schloss Reichenau, Reichenau-Tamins

Blue Summit Switzerland trägt Fakten der Wissenschaft an die Politik

24.06.2025,

9.00 am

Lausanne

Elimination poussée de l'azote des eaux usées municipales

PEAK-VSA-Cours d’approfondissement V60/25

Is a space research program, aiming to develop a bioregenerative life support system for long-term space missions and space habitations for example on Mars.