Sustainability Success Story – Maria Manidaki

In this blog series, which is part of our Sustainability Hub, we’re speaking to chemical engineers across the world making a difference to make sustainable practices and products a reality and more accessible to all for the wider benefit of our society and globe.

Maria, tell us briefly about your background in the water sector, particularly in sustainability.

I started working in the water sector in 2003 as a graduate engineer. I was involved in large design and build wastewater treatment projects and also had the opportunity to gain site experience. I was very lucky to be involved in the design and construction of the first small-scale hydrogeneration plant in screened sewage in the world – in Esholt Wastewater Treatment Works in Yorkshire, UK where I learned more technical aspects in mechanical, electrical, hydraulic and civil engineering. Following some operational optimization work on wastewater treatment plants for energy consumption, small scale renewable generation from sludge and other assets, I was lucky to take more of a technical advisory role and being involved in utility projects in different parts of the world, focusing on sustainable technologies and strategies.

And what got you into focusing on carbon and net zero?

I was always passionate about sustainability and water. I knew that not one engineering discipline could have all the answers. Hence when I was first involved in the design of wastewater treatment plants, I knew that we needed to do more to generate more energy, to reduce energy consumption to find better technical solutions to improve the sustainability profile of the plant.

Then I focused more on greenhouse gas emissions and actively pursued decarbonisation projects in water, including process emissions, and other sectors such as my involvement with PAS 2080 and the Infrastructure Carbon Review to see how to best unlock our industry blockers and accelerate change – technical, policy, financial. I appreciated that one of the main blockers has been our industry behaviours and lack of policy levers and incentive mechanisms.

You were involved in the development of PAS2080. Why it is so important for our future generations?

I was very fortunate to be in the Technical Authoring (TA) team for PAS2080 – the first publication in 2016 and the recent revision published in 2023. I was a Lead Author and together with the rest of the TA team engaged with over 50 organisations in the development process to ensure the difficult subjects of decarbonisation such as Net Zero transition, systems thinking, nature base solutions, collaboration and procurement had sufficient industry representation from different parts of the world – both in buildings and infrastructure.

I think the PAS is a key specification for our built environment sector as it focuses on how the different value chain player objectives and behaviours are aligned and promote collaboration to accelerate the net zero transition. This is easier said than done of course but that’s the intention! Normally I hear many colleagues think that the difficulties on decarbonization are technical, but from my experience they are mainly driven from misaligned behaviours, policies and other non-technical challenges!

What would your key take-home messages be to chemical engineers when looking at how they can impact net zero ambitions?

Well, my first message would be to keep being curious and seek to actively collaborate with other engineering and non-engineering disciplines to better understand the more systemic challenges in our built environment!

If we solely focus on the very technical challenges of say a technology in any sector or project, we would miss the bigger picture and how our actions in our project may have positive or negative greenhouse gas emissions consequences in the wider system. For example, in a wastewater treatment plant, where nitrous oxide emissions may be significant, in abating those, we need to understand the balance on how the energy consumption of the plant may be affected and what other wider opportunities may be available to consider. Would the production of green hydrogen nearby a water utility offer oxygen as a good by-product to use in secondary treatment in the wastewater plant? Could we further maximise product and energy recovery of a facility to be used in the wider infrastructure and buildings system? Waste heat or other by-products? It is important to think at a systems level!

What are your ambitions for the world and where should we be looking for examples of best practice?

This is a difficult question! My personal wish for the world is for each of us to think how we can influence the carbon impact through our work and find opportunities to collaborate with others.

As soon as we acknowledge that we cannot solve a complex problem such as climate change on our own, and we start making connections with others, we have more chances of not only solving the technical challenges but also influencing others in the industry and inform better evidence-based policies that will accelerate our transition to net zero.

But this requires individual passion, curiosity, persistence, not getting disappointed and keeping going! There are many examples of good decarbonisation practice in our industry – the UK Green Construction Board, Water UK, UKWIR, IWA groups - as well as academia and professional institutions (ICE, IMechE, IET and of course IChemE) that are good sources of information and practical examples. Don’t forget the PAS2080 guidance document too!

How can chemical engineers contribute to achieving our goals of sustaining global temperature increases at, or less than, 1.5ᵒC?

I believe that chemical engineers have an amazing breadth of knowledge to use and significantly influence our net zero transition. In the water sector for example they are ideally placed to navigate with other engineers the biggest emissions challenge which is nitrous oxide and methane in wastewater and sludge.

They are also ideally placed to provide technical advice on how we can make the most of our scarce water resources (being desalination or wastewater reuse) to support the transition to a hydrogen economy, particularly green hydrogen. And for hydrogen it is not only about the water aspects but the hydrogen generators, cooling water systems as well as sustainable fuels transition through product recovery and use such as ammonia, CO2 and others.

For sectors other than water, they are ideally placed to look more closely at industrial emissions in heavy industries, including chemicals – which are some of the most difficult ones to abate. So, there is plenty of opportunity there.

I have to say I have always been, and still am, a big fan of chemical engineers!

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