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Can this recover value from my waste stream — and is it real?

MESSAI turns thousands of peer-reviewed studies into calibrated models so an industrial or commercial team can evaluate microbial electrochemical systems for wastewater treatment, resource recovery, and hydrogen — with honest uncertainty and a first-pass TEA — before spending capital on a pilot.

Grounded in the literature · honest uncertainty · no black boxes

What you get out of it

Outcome 01

See the recovery — and the honest economics

Enter your influent and get a predicted recovery balance (water, electricity, biogas, H₂, struvite, NH₃) with a 25-year mini-TEA and LCA for your stream. Numbers are literature midpoints, not a contracted quote — you see exactly where each one comes from.

Outcome 02

De-risk before capex

Every prediction ships with conformal uncertainty bounds, an out-of-distribution flag, and a prior-trust badge. You see where the model is confident and where it is extrapolating — so a pilot decision rests on calibrated evidence, not a single point estimate.

Outcome 03

Standardize on evidence, not vendor claims

Recovery and performance ranges trace to thousands of peer-reviewed measurements with published calibration coverage. Compare architectures on a common, auditable basis instead of taking a supplier deck at face value.

Live demo · your stream

Drive it on a stream like yours

Start with a wastewater stream, get a ranked system suggestion, and see a real ML prediction with conformal bounds, an out-of-distribution flag, and a prior-trust badge — then a recovery balance, calibration receipts, and a 25-year mini-TEA.

Illustrative — not design numbers

Every value below is a literature-midpoint estimate with published uncertainty, shown so you can judge whether the recovery is real for your case. Site engineering typically adds 20–40%; these are not a contracted quote or a stamped design. The calibration and scope-limit panels at the bottom show exactly where the models are — and aren't — trustworthy.

Section 1 · Influent characterisation

Define the wastewater stream

Six industrial archetypes or set parameters within their literature ranges. Each slider shows hard bounds, typical band, sub-ranges by facility type, and the active preset's target value.

Routed family · anodic oxidation
5,000 m³/day
10 m³/day100,000 m³/day
Literature
100–50,000 m³/day
Metcalf & Eddy 5e Tbl 3-15
Median
5,000 m³/day
Preset
5,000 m³/day
Brewery effluent
2,500 mg/L
100 mg/L25,000 mg/L
Literature
200–15,000 mg/L
Metcalf & Eddy / Renou 2008
Median
2,500 mg/L
Preset
2,500 mg/L
Brewery effluent
40 mg/L
0 mg/L2,500 mg/L
Literature
10–1,500 mg/L
Metcalf & Eddy / Tervahauta 2014
Median
40 mg/L
Preset
40 mg/L
Brewery effluent
8 mg/L
0 mg/L200 mg/L
Literature
2–80 mg/L
Metcalf & Eddy 5e
Median
8 mg/L
Preset
8 mg/L
Brewery effluent
25.0 °C
5.0 °C45.0 °C
Literature
15.0–35.0 °C
Logan 2008 §4.2
Median
25.0 °C
Preset
25.0 °C
Brewery effluent
6.8
4.0 9.5
Literature
6.0–8.5
Patil 2011 / Logan 2008
Median
7.0
Preset
6.8
Brewery effluent

Section 2 · System suggestion

Pick a coupled architecture

Ranked by influent fit using the 5-physics-family router. Click a card to drive every downstream panel.

loading 3D reactor scene…

Section 4 · Live prediction · /api/ml/predict

Real ML stack, honest bounds

idlein-corpuscal · n/a
Power density
mW/m²
COD removal
%
Predictor doesn't emit a COD block on this path. See the I/O analysis section below for a population-prior estimate.
Voltage
V
Current density
A/m²

Section 5 · Recovery balance

What this system actually recovers

Daily mass + energy flux from first-principles balance on the influent and the live prediction. Hover any band for source.

Net electricity · 2.544 kWh/m³
COD removed
10000 kg/d
80% removal
MES electricity
2.4 kWh/d
from MES cells
Biogas → CHP
12720 kWh/d
35% CHP electrical eff.
Nutrients
0.0 kg/d
struvite + NH₃
  • · Using literature-midpoint fallback for power density.
  • · COD removal from archetype default (80%).

Section 7 · Design recommendations

Apply a recommended change

Stage a recommendation to see it as a ghost overlay in 3D. Apply to commit it to the scenario.

Section 8 · Sensitivity ladder

Which knob moves the needle

Within-paper Bayesian effects from within-paper-effects.json. Each β is the population-level effect on the target after partialling out paper-level confounds. Sign matters — green increases, red decreases.

Targets · cod_removal · power_density
HrtCod Removal
β = +0.44
n = 5, [-1.64, 2.25]

Mechanistic closure · direction-validated levers

Does the physics closure predict the direction (sign) of a within-design change better than a coin flip (50%)? These are the only axes that validated. Direction agreement only — not magnitude.

Substrate → power density
63%
dir. acc · closure forward sweep
pH → power density
62%
dir. acc · closure forward sweep
External resistance → current density
71–78%
dir. acc · load-line operating point

Not shown: current↔substrate and current↔pH are anti-skillful (the closure predicts the wrong direction), so we exclude them rather than surface a misleading bar. The richer interactive version lives at /lab/design.

Section 9 · Calibration · honest caveats

What this model is — and isn't — calibrated for

OOS 95% coverage
97.98% target ≥ 93%
n = 940 held-out
MFC stratum coverage
no data yet · target ≥ 90%
No MFC stratum in the current calibration artifact yet; using the hierarchical prior with wider bounds until paired holdout obs land.
Expected calibration error
no data yet · target ≤ 0.05
ECE not yet computed for this corpus — awaiting calibration artifact refresh.
Parameter
System
Coverage
n
power_density_areal
MFC
97.9%
234
current_density_areal
MFC
97.5%
163
current_density_areal
MEC
100.0%
69
coulombic_efficiency
MFC
100.0%
135
coulombic_efficiency
MEC
100.0%
64
cod_removal
MFC
97.3%
220
cod_removal
MEC
92.7%
55

What we don't claim

  • MDC, MES, MNRC, MMRC, MBES are not in the 97.98% OOS holdout — analytical predictors only.
  • TEA numbers are literature midpoints; not a contracted quote. Site engineering adds 20–40%.
  • COD removal predictions are coarse for high-strength industrial streams with toxic shocks.
  • No predictions of micropollutant removal, antibiotic resistance, or pathogen fate.
  • Long-term biofouling, electrode degradation > 12 months are absent from the corpus.

Section 10 · Mini-TEA · MFC + Anaerobic Digestion

What it costs

From the archetype's Process-TEA baseline. Discount rate 0.1, lifetime 15 yr. Honest disclaimer: literature midpoints, not a contracted quote.

Scaled · 1.00× ref flow (5,000 m³/d)
CapEx
$60.6M
Annual OpEx
$4.2M
LCOE
$5.15/kWh
LCO-water
$5.34/m³
NPV @ life
−$92.0M
Payback
No payback within 15-yr life
GWP
-0.28 kgCO₂e/m³
Fossil energy
-3.34 MJ/m³
  • · Electrode capex $1,200/m² (carbon-cloth, Logan 2008 inflated).
  • · Performance inputs are stub literature midpoints — wire to a sweep export for real numbers.
  • · Higher 10 % discount rate reflects MFC scale-up risk (Santoro 2017).

Every number traces to a source file · no black boxes · audit dashboard · full technical demo

Who it's for

Wastewater utilities & industrial dischargers

Turn a treatment cost centre into an energy- and nutrient-recovery opportunity — and quantify it before committing.

Resource-recovery & circular-economy teams

Screen struvite, ammonia, metals, and water reuse pathways against the evidence for a given feedstock.

Hydrogen & biogas developers

Assess MEC-H₂ and MFC/MEC + anaerobic-digestion routes for low-strength or recalcitrant effluent.

Process & TEA engineers

Get a defensible starting flowsheet and capex/opex band to build your own detailed model on top of.

Typical streams

The demo ships six commonly-cited industrial and municipal wastewater archetypes as starting points — each calibrated to published characterisations. Load one, or dial in your own.

Brewery effluent

High-strength, well-cited Logan anchor

5,000 m³/d2,500 mg/L COD

Municipal wastewater

Largest TAM, low-grade energy + nutrient recovery

50,000 m³/d450 mg/L COD

Dairy processing

Fats + proteins, balanced C:N

2,500 m³/d4,000 mg/L COD

Landfill leachate

Toxic, recalcitrant — MEC-H₂ candidate

200 m³/d12,000 mg/L COD

Blackwater (decentralized)

High nutrients, struvite + NH₃ recovery target

50 m³/d6,500 mg/L COD

Pharmaceutical effluent

High-COD, micropollutant polishing

800 m³/d8,500 mg/L COD

Get started

Bring us your stream. We'll show you what the evidence says it can recover.

Share an influent characterisation and target outcomes, and we'll walk you through a calibrated recovery + TEA assessment and where a pilot would de-risk fastest.

founders@messai.io