Congratulations Bridget Ama Quansah

Bridget Ama Quansah is a graduating MPhil Chemical Engineering student from the Department of Chemical Engineering, KNUST.

Her research investigated the environmental burdens associated with Ghana's Kumasi Wastewater Treatment plant. After optimising some of its treatment processes, she studied the environmental performance and trade-offs associated with the wastewater treatment plant. For this purpose, life cycle assessment (LCA) for three different scenarios was studied for the plant, including the baseline scenario, which is the plant in its current state and the first and second scenarios, which had modified treatment stages.

The primary treatment stage was modified by replacing 0.3 kg of polyacrylamide with 0.45 kg of aluminium sulphate for coagulation. Scenario 2 consisted of 0.45 kg of aluminium sulphate in the primary treatment stage and 0.4 kg of sodium hypochlorite in the tertiary treatment stage, which was replaced with 0.02 kg of ozone for disinfection. The LCA was conducted following ISO 14040/44 standards to evaluate the environmental impacts of all three scenarios. OpenLCA 2.0.2 was the software used with the Ecoinvent database version 3.8. The CML IA baseline method was used to assess the environmental impacts.

The KNUST Engineering Education Project (KEEP) has been instrumental in her academic success by providing financial support. She is very grateful for the support and encouragement received from the staff and management of KEEP. She is sincerely thankful to her supervisors, Dr Augustine Ntiamoah and Prof. Nana Yaw Asiedu, for their invaluable guidance and insightful feedback, which have been instrumental in shaping the direction of her research.

To Prof. Ulrike Gayh, Dr Kenneth Bedu-Addo, and Prof. Doruk Özdemir of SRH University-Heidelberg, she says thank you for the Exchange Programme opportunity. This provided her with the necessary academic environment and study models for her research.

She plans to conduct further studies in Life Cycle Assessment and Process Optimisation.