Severn Trent Water Procure Nitrification Toxicity Monitors

Water Innovate, a subsidiary of Bluewater Bio International, the global specialist in wastewater treatment, is pleased to announce the sale of two of its groundbreaking N-TOX instruments to Severn Trent Water. N-TOX is a patented toxicity monitor used for detecting nitrification inhibition events in wastewater treatment facilities which can lead to inadequate treatment performance and discharges to the environment with high ammonia concentrations. The system also has applications in greenhouse gas monitoring to reduce the carbon footprint.

Severn Trent Water have recently experienced nitrification issues at their Strongford Wastewater Treatment plant due to the illegal action of a business customer discharging toxic industrial effluent into the sewerage network. This ultimately resulted in a fish kill and investigation by the Environment Agency. Using N-TOX for toxicity monitoring will enable water and sewage utilities to have an early warning of such events and give precious time for proactive interventions to remove or reduce the impact of such events on the wastewater treatment process and the receiving water environment. Additional work with Severn Trent will see the N-TOX units tested within the sewerage systems to evaluate the suitability of the units for this application.

"It is very pleasing that Severn Trent have recognised the advantages of using N-TOX to mitigate pollution events where biological processes are impacted," commented Professor Tom Stephenson of Water Innovate. "The non-invasive nature of the detection system combined with remote access to data, makes its installation and use relatively simple. Other water utility clients have used N-TOX as well and we have exported units to Australia and Spain."

N-TOX has been developed by Water Innovate specifically for the application of monitoring nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions from wastewater treatment facilities. Nitrous oxide, commonly referred to as ‘laughing gas', is a very powerful greenhouse gas – almost 300 times more damaging than the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂). The N-TOX unit is capable of measuring nitrous oxide off-gases from a variety of wastewater treatment processes including activated sludge, sequencing batch reactors, industrial continuously stirred bioreactors and trickling filters. The data generated can be used for both toxicity monitoring and quantifying greenhouse gas emissions from wastewater treatment processes.

Water Innovate is working with Cranfield University and Severn Trent Water to identify ways to minimise both indirect emissions, for example power consumption, and direct emissions from wastewater treatment processes. Greenhouse gas emissions from activated sludge processes are being evaluated using N-TOX to quantify emissions of nitrous oxide, whilst implementing novel control of their activated sludge plants. This will enable their plants to be optimised not just in terms of performance, but also power consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

SOURCE: Water Innovate