Virginia Tech’s Effluential Hokies win VWEA wastewater student design competition, advance to WEFTEC 2026

Virginia Tech's Effluential Hokies have won the wastewater division of the Virginia Water Environment Association Student Design Competition for the second year in a row, earning the opportunity to represent Virginia at the national WEF Student Design Competition at WEFTEC 2026 in New Orleans.

The VWEA competition gives student teams real-world, consultant-style experience through a written design proposal and oral presentation. This year's challenge asked teams to develop a preliminary engineering response for phosphorus improvements at the Henrico County Water Reclamation Facility. The Virginia Tech team prepared a professional design package recommending a phosphorus removal upgrade strategy centered on intentional enhanced biological phosphorus removal, expanded return activated sludge fermentation, dedicated anaerobic zones, methanol as a backup carbon source for denitrification, and chemical phosphorus polishing as a contingency measure.

Their work integrated regulatory review, process design, hydraulic analysis, modeling, and cost evaluation to propose a practical and resilient pathway for Henrico Water to meet more stringent future phosphorus limits.

The team brought together students from Biological Systems Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering. Yitao Li, a Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Zhiwu Wang, served as student lead and project lead, coordinating the overall effort, guiding the technical direction, developing the process flow configuration, and leading BioWin model calibration and simulation. Mingxi Wang, a Biological Systems Engineering Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Wang, served as senior process engineer and contributed to the enhanced biological phosphorus removal design, anaerobic zone configuration, nitrogen removal strategy, and chemical polishing evaluation. Siyi Chen, a Biological Systems Engineering Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Wang, served as process engineer and led the design of the return activated sludge fermentation tanks, including volatile fatty acid production evaluation, sludge splitting requirements, and tank volume calculations. Cyrus Li, a Biological Systems Engineering Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Wang, served as hydraulic engineer, leading hydraulic analysis and GIS-based routing for the sidestream fermentation system. Jackson Becker, a Civil and Environmental Engineering M.S. student advised by Dr. Amy Pruden, served as project engineer and focused on capital and recurring cost estimation.

The student team was supported by technical coaches Dr. Zhiwu Wang, Dr. John T. Novak, and Dr. Yewei Sun, an adjunct assistant professor in Biological Systems Engineering. Together, the students demonstrated the strength of Virginia Tech's interdisciplinary wastewater engineering training by translating a real utility challenge into a forward-looking, technically grounded design solution.

With the state title secured, the Effluential Hokies will carry that momentum to WaterJAM and then to WEFTEC 2026.