SWIC – unique testbed for circular
water management

Sjöstadsverket Water Innovation Centre (SWIC) works to develop and test new technologies for water purification, as well as methods to utilise all the resources contained in wastewater. Operations at Loudden in Stockholm officially opened in April 2024.

SWIC is a testing and pilot facility for municipalities, industry and academia and is run jointly by IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and KTH. The operation started in 2008 at Henriksdalsberget in Stockholm under the name Hammarby Sjöstadsverk, but is now located in Loudden. “A new facility offers new opportunities. Pilot and demonstration facilities are extremely important in the innovation system,” said IVL CEO John Rune Nielsen at the opening of SWIC.

SWIC develops technologies to treat, reuse and recover resources in wastewater from both municipalities and industry. The facility’s work is focused on creating treatment processes that are more energy- and resource-efficient and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

A range of active projects

An important activity during the year was the effort to characterise the incoming wastewater to ensure that the results at Loudden can be compared with previous experiments in Henriksdal.

IVL is collaborating with Stockholm Vatten och Avfall on the long-term optimisation of a membrane bioreactor (MBR), a project that began before the move and will extend over a total of 15 years.

“The membranes, which are thin, hollow plastic tubes, separate the biological sludge from the water, making it completely free of particles. Among other things, we are testing biological phosphorus removal, which can reduce chemical consumption. The results are promising,” says Mayumi Narongin-Fujikawa, IVL's SWIC coordinator.

In another project, IVL is collaborating with Syvab's Himmerfjärdsverket plant to combine MBR technology with variable dosing of pulverized activated carbon to remove micropollutants such as pharmaceutical residues and PFAS.

Pilot studies on-site or at the client’s facility

All work at SWIC is done on a pilot or laboratory scale. Customers can send a couple of cubic metres of wastewater here, which is tested with different types of treatment techniques at the facility. As little as five litere of water or sludge is enough to do a laboratory-scale study.

Employees at SWIC are also able to build a mobile pilot plant inside a container that is then transported to, for example, a municipality that wants to test new processes on its local water.

Visitors from all over the world

SWIC attracts a steady stream of visitors, many of whom travel here from all over the world. “The interest in tours here is very high. During the autumn, we had one to two study visits every week”, says Mayumi Narongin-Fujikawa.