The Krafla Volcano is located in an active volcanic area in northern Iceland, near the town of Reykjahlid and Lake Mývatn, the fourth largest natural lake in Iceland.
The surrounding landscape is dominated by craters and steaming volcanic terrain, rich in colors and shades of ochre and red that blend with the blue sky and the green of the lichens, in a breathtaking combination.
This popular tourist destination in Iceland has seen a significant increase in visitor numbers in recent years, both due to the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull Volcano in 2010 and the famous TV series “Game of Thrones.” It is in this area that scenes set in the far North of Westeros were filmed, amidst the glacial landscapes of the lands of the wildlings, beyond the Wall.
The lack of services (access to fresh water and toilets) was a long-standing issue for visitors to Krafla Volcano, resolved with the installation of restrooms near the main access to the crater. The next step for the local environmental authority was to find a sustainable solution to treat the wastewater produced by the new facilities, given the remote location and lack of any electrical supply.
The main challenge of this project is represented by the strong fluctuation in the number of visitors throughout the year, varying from a minimum of a few visitors per day during the winter season to around a hundred people each day during the busy summer season. The wastewater treatment system installed for the new tourist restrooms had to be able to adapt to this seasonality.
Another difficulty was the restrictive environmental regulations, especially regarding the high quality of the effluent required to protect the natural beauty of this area.
The four BIOWATER systems with BIOROCK® technology chosen and installed at Krafla Volcano have proven to be the best solution for wastewater treatment due to their operation without any electrical energy, low maintenance requirements, and optimal results even during periods of non-use or intermittent load during the low season.
Moreover, given the high quality of the outgoing effluent, the BIOROCK® technology has met the standards imposed by environmental regulations to protect the purity of the waters of nearby Lake Mývatn.
In 2019, four years after the installation of the systems, water samples taken after treatment from the Krafla Volcano systems showed the following results:
- suspended solids: 3.8 mg/L
- COD: 22.2 mg/L
- BoD5: 2 mg/L
- Total P: 1.8 mg/L
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