While the market for small sewage treatment facilities is rapidly growing in China, the relevant product quality standards are lacking. In order to ensure the effectiveness of pollutant elimination from wastewater in rural areas in the future, standardized plant technologies are to be made increasingly available to the market.
Under the coordination of the Sino-German Centre for Water and Health Research (WATCH) both the WATCH-partners CWEG (China Water Environment Group) and PIA GmbH (Testing Institute for Wastewater Technology GmbH) Aachen invited the Shanghai Urban Construction Design & Research Institute (SUCDRI) (Group) Co., Ltd., Sichuan University, and other institutes to form a working group. Together they submitted a project proposal to the China Association of Environmental Protection Industry in 2019 to compile "Guidelines for technical performance test of small sewage treatment systems". This project aims to provide standardized testing methods for scientific and objective performance assessment of small sewage treatment systems in order to improve the rural sewage treatment standard system as well as the quality and technical level of small sewage treatment facilities. Since then, the members of the Joint Working Group have made considerable efforts to promote the development of the Guidelines, formulate a plan for further action leveraging the successful experiences from Europe, Japan, etc. while considering the status quo in China.
On June 19, 2020, the China Association of Environmental Protection Industry hosted a workshop, which invited relevant experts to review the proposal and was held online due to the corona pandemic.
At the meeting, the representative of CWEG, Dr. Li, introduced the background and necessity of the project, as well as the basis of the team´s work in engineering design, research, and international cooperation. The CWEG representative also put forward the work plan and content outline. The review experts agreed on the necessity for the development of the Guideline and made recommendations for optimization of the content outline. After careful review and discussion, the expert group unanimously agreed that the project proposal should be approved.
According to the work plan, the joint working group will finish the Guideline draft by the first quarter of 2021 for receiving comments. After submitted the draft for review, the final version is expected to be published in early 2022.