Over the past years, the economic growth in Vietnam has risen significantly. As a result, Vietnam has an increasing number of more than 200 registered industrial zones without sustainable wastewater treatment. To approach this challenge, a “Flagship Project” was realized for Tra Noc Industrial Zone in Can Tho City, located in the Mekong-Delta. Accomplishing activities for the central sewage treatment plant of the industrial zone, the German-Vietnamese joint research project developed an integrated wastewater concept for industrial zones (“AKIZ” = “Integriertes Abwasserkonzept für Industriezonen”) to secure the efficiency and sustainable operation of the whole wastewater system including all its technical components. In addition to the combination of centralized and decentralized wastewater treatment solutions, the close connection of technical and financial planning is an important part of the integrative approach. This also includes adequate structures for wastewater tariffing and cost allocation. In addition, there were initial successes in economic exploitation. However, it has been proven that the market for industrial partners, with their high-quality technologies and solutions, is limited to those (few) cases where decisions for technically and economically sustainable solutions are actually made.

Objectives and tasks

Technical and economic monitoring is a key bottleneck factor for the transfer of sustainable, integrated wastewater concepts to the industrial zones of Vietnam. The same also applies to other emerging countries. The overall objective of this project is to promote the introduction of such technical and economic monitoring in Vietnam (northern provinces, southern provinces, and central provinces), by transferring technologies and methods which were developed, verified, and partly demonstrated with the AKIZ project.