High-Rise Wastewater Energy Recovery System
By: John Christian Mohrman, Sean Romero, and Cooper Ackerman
Department: Mechanical Engineering
Faculty Advisor: Dr. George Anwar
The energy used to pump water up a high-rise building is lost upon draining. Our design goal was to recover the maximum amount of energy possible from falling wastewater by diverting the water flow going to the sewer, through a hydro-turbine/generator where electrical energy can then be recovered. Our calculations show that we can recover approximately 9.2 MW of power annually from the building at 100 Van Ness, San Francisco, CA if our plan were to be implemented.