Industry News
2026-10-20Introduction: At the 2026年 International Water Association (IWA) World Water Congress & Exhibition held in Glasgow, UK, the mega-city "water-energy coupling" wastewater resource recovery project developed by Zhongyuan Environmental Protection's Zhengzhou New District Wastewater Treatment Plant stood out from participating projects from 65 countries and 320 worldwide, winning the Gold Award in the "Water Technologies and Infrastructure that Change the Market" category of the IWA Project Innovation Awards, and capturing the sole "Global Innovation Grand Award" of this edition. This is the first time Chinese water technology has reached the highest podium of this award.
How a wastewater treatment plant won the "Nobel Prize of the water sector"
The IWA Project Innovation Awards are held every two years to recognize outstanding achievements in water resource management, scientific research, and technological innovation in the global water sector. This edition covered 65 countries and 320 projects, with the fiercest competition in its history. The "Global Innovation Grand Award" has only one slot in the entire field, and the Zhengzhou project took that sole seat.
What is noteworthy is the identity of the award recipient—it is not a newly built demonstration project, but a mega-city wastewater treatment plant operating at full load. This means the awarded technical pathway has been verified under million-ton-scale actual operating conditions, rather than ideal data from laboratory or pilot scale. For Chinese peers seeking implementable upgrading solutions, this is more valuable than the trophy itself.
Four hardcore innovations: from "pollutant removal" to "output"
According to Zhang Yan, Director of the Zhengzhou New District Wastewater Treatment Plant, the award is supported by four interlocking technological innovations:
- High-efficiency biochemical system—without additional carbon source dosing, the Total Nitrogen removal rate exceeds 85%, while maintaining excellent phosphorus removal performance. This directly cuts the plant's largest chemical cost and avoids the indirect carbon emissions caused by external carbon source addition;
- Functional activated coke adsorption—deep removal of COD and emerging contaminants, with effluent color stably at 2 times or below and visibility of over 5 meters; its application at million-ton scale is the world's first;
- Sludge pyrolysis gasification—a thousand-ton-scale project has been built, one of the world's largest sludge pyrolysis systems, with flue gas volume reduced by 30% and fly ash volume reduced by 95% compared with conventional incineration, and emission indicators fully superior to national standards;
- "Water-energy coupling" system—returning reclaimed water, thermal energy, green electricity, and recycled products to urban production and life, making the wastewater treatment plant a supporting node for urban resilience.
The four technologies are not isolated additions but form a complete material and energy flow: carbon source saved in the biochemical stage reduces chemical consumption, activated coke pushes effluent quality to Surface Water Class III, sludge pyrolysis turns solid waste into energy and building material feedstock, and the plant's 32.5 MW photovoltaic capacity (including under construction) adds another piece of green electricity. The plant area, traditionally "energy-consuming pollution treatment," is thus transformed into a green factory that recovers resources and produces energy.
How reclaimed water becomes energy: the "heat transfer" at Matougang
Zhengzhou's per capita water resources availability is only 96 cubic meters, less than one-twentieth of the national average, making it a typical resource-scarce city. This determines that Zhengzhou must manage "used water" as a proper water source.
On Longhu Financial Island in Zhengdong New District, the winter warmth and summer cooling of hundreds of office buildings do not rely on cooling towers and coal-fired boilers, but on a reclaimed water source heat pump system. Matougang reclaimed water has a winter temperature of about 15℃ and a summer temperature of about 25℃. The water source heat pump extracts heat from the water in winter to heat interiors, and transfers indoor heat to the reclaimed water in summer for cooling, with system energy efficiency more than 30% higher than conventional air conditioning.
Data from Zhongyuan Environmental Protection's Reclaimed Water Operation Center shows that 2025年 the annual cumulative supply of reclaimed water was about 6000万 tons; after the Longhu Financial Island project is fully operational, it can reduce standard coal consumption by about 1.5万 tons per year, significantly cutting carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide emissions. Zhongyuan Environmental Protection has thus formed a cascading reclaimed water utilization model of "energy first, reuse second, landscape water last"—the same drop of water first serves as a cooling and heating carrier, then as industrial and municipal water, and finally supplements river channels.
Implications for the industry: the value anchor has shifted
What is most worth pondering in the Zhengzhou case is not the advanced nature of any single technology, but that it has switched the value calculation of wastewater treatment plants to a different coordinate system.
Under the traditional model, a wastewater treatment plant's revenue comes almost entirely from wastewater treatment fees, and the evaluation criterion is "whether the effluent meets standards"; under the "water–energy coupling" model, the revenue structure becomes "treatment fees + reclaimed water fees + energy supply revenue + green electricity and recycled product revenue", and the evaluation criteria expand to a four-fold assessment of "water quality + energy consumption + carbon emissions + resource output". This shift happens to be in sync with domestic policy trends: the newly revised Regulations on Urban Drainage and Wastewater Treatment require that scenarios such as industrial production, urban greening, and road cleaning give priority to reclaimed water; among the 150 plus national standards issued by the State Administration for Market Regulation this year, "urban wastewater reclamation and reuse" has been explicitly included in the standards system of the Blue Water Defense Campaign.
For existing wastewater treatment plants, the Zhengzhou experience offers a dismantlable retrofit sequence: first use precise aeration and process optimization to reduce energy and chemical consumption (lowest investment, fastest results), then use advanced treatment to push effluent quality up to reuse standards, and finally stack sludge and waste heat utilization to form an energy loop. Of the three steps, the first two are accessible to the vast majority of plants, while the third depends on whether there is stable local heating (cooling) load demand.
Conclusion
A plant treating one million tons of wastewater per day won the world's only grand award by "making water run one more trip". The real meaning of this award may be: in water-scarce cities, wastewater treatment plants are no longer merely environmental cost centers, but water resource and energy infrastructure that can be redesigned. For the many urban wastewater treatment plants in China facing the dual pressure of upgrading standards and reducing carbon emissions, Zhengzhou provides a path reference that has already been validated by an international review system.
About TIANYI TECH: TIANYI TECH (TIANYI LIMITED) focuses on the fields of wastewater treatment, reclaimed water reuse, and water environment governance, providing municipal and industrial clients with full-chain services including process design, equipment integration, engineering general contracting, and smart operations. The company continuously tracks global water treatment policies, technologies, and market dynamics, and is committed to helping customers achieve efficient utilization and sustainable management of water resources with reliable solutions. For more information, please visit the company website www.tianyitech.hk.
Sources: CNR "Beautiful China · Henan Practice: The Green Transformation of a Drop of Wastewater — Zhengzhou Breaks New Ground in Reclaimed Water Utilization" (2026年10月17日); Henan Workers' Daily "Zhengzhou: Wastewater Regenerated into Resources, Forging a New Circular Path" (2026年10月20日); International Water Association (IWA) 2026年 World Water Congress award announcement.
