The Donation professorship's field is wastewater treatment, and it is funded by several Finnish water utilities and associations working in the water sector. In April 2023, Henri Haimi was appointed a part-time professor of practice in the Department of Built Environment of Aalto University. His appointment will last five years.
Our research themes are nutrient recovery, removal of micropollutants, and energy and GHG optimization – all this in wastewater treatment and especially in cold climate conditions.
The role of wastewater treatment is moving from the removal of substances to the recycling of resources.
The load of different pollutants in the Baltic Sea is a problem we need to solve.
Wastewater treatment plants are among the big energy consumers in our societies and they have a significant carbon footprint.
In Finland and in the Baltic Sea region wastewaters and natural waters are relatively cold during the major part of the year. This affects treatment processes.
Read here stories from students about working in the Water and Wastewater Engineering group.
Here you can find more information about the organizations funding our research.
Nina Poutanen: Concrete corrosion in water treatment plants: origin, effects and solutions.
Tiitu Taipale: Biological nitrogen removal from cold and low carbon mining wastewater - An application of MBBR technology (supported by Agnico Eagles Kittilä)
Ksenija Golovko: Application of advanced oxidation processes for removal of antibiotics and a wide range of antibiotic resistance genes from Finnish reject waters.
Daria Popova: Water quality effects in battery metals flowsheets focusing on magnesium in lithium-rich brines (supported by Metso)
Milla Sieranen: Nitrous oxide emissions at three Finnish wastewater treatment plants – Mechanisms behind nitrous oxide emissions and potential of process modelling in emission quantification.
Osama El Asri: Mitigation of ammonia and methane emissions in pre-treatment of fertilizer recovery process.
Marie Hedström: Operational environmental handprint for wet waste and wastewater treatment on large ships (supported by Evac).
Nea Rautiainen: Recent changes in diet and its impact on wastewater treatment.
Helena Hilander: Nitrous oxide emission dynamics and emission factors of two Finnish wastewater treatment plants.
Oona Kinnunen: Study of microbial population involved in nitrogen removal and nitrous oxide emission at wastewater treatment plants.
Talvikki Suhonen: Evaluating the potency of granular activated sludge in removing nitrogen from recirculating aquaculture system (supported by LUKE).
Sadia Saleem: Optimizing the start-up phase for granular activated sludge using bio char / sludge char powder (supported by LUKE).
Maija Ahonen: Effects of wastewater heat recovery on nitrogen removal in Finnish wastewater treatment plants.
Alexis Awaitey: Carbon footprint of Finnish wastewater treatment plants (supported by FCG).
Omar Elgadhar: Investigating the use of aerobic granular sludge for removal of nitrogenous compounds for wastewater treatment in a recirculating aquaculture system (supported by LUKE).
Chen Xin Sen: Development of antibiotic resistance detection method for the express analysis of wastewater effluents.
Sanni Eerikäinen: Developing process control and operation of Finnish municipal wastewater treatment plants with data analytics: examples from process industries and international utilities.
Oula Mikkola: Estimating microplastic concentrations and loads in cruise ship grey waters (supported by Evac).
Ilaria Righetto: Utilization of natural coagulants for improving nutrient recovery with membrane contactor technology.
Lauri Pöyry: Modelling wastewater aeration system and high-speed turbo blower for energy efficiency improvements (supported by ABB).
Kiia Mölsä: Life cycle assessment of a wastewater treatment and a sludge handling process - Current state and future scenarios (supported by HSY).
Frank Segessenmann: Improving organization of water treatment projects with a collaborative database connecting schematics, 3D models and other. Case study: Geneva wastewater treatment plant (supported by BG Ingénieurs Conseil).
Katriina Rajala: Removal of microplastics by coagulation/flocculation from municipal wastewater (supported by Kemira).
Irene Konola: Optimization and quality assessment of fertilizers based on resource recovery technologies.
Shanna Myers: Nitrous oxide and gas transfer in full-scale activated sludge basins.
Researchers at Aalto are creating a digital model for automatic continuous predictive process simulations supporting wastewater treatment plant operation in a new project called DIGICARBA. The proposed digital tool will have a wastewater treatment process model connected to continuous data transmission from the Helsinki wastewater treatment plant.
His expertise is in mitigating climate change in the wastewater sector, digital solutions and the recovery of resources from wastewater.
Here you can find our recent publications.