The Environment Working Group (EWG) recently released a report that claims up to 110 million Americans could have drinking water contaminated by PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) — much higher than the previous estimate of 16 million affected Americans.
The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) – of which the Terrence J. O’Brien Water Reclamation Plant (WRP) is part of – has made a number of upgrades to its treatment process in recent years.
Water treatment plant (WTP) and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) operators are increasingly supporting better decision-making by leveraging digitalization capabilities available through instrumentation and plant management systems. Successful adoption of digitalization starts with identifying the right balance of tools (i.e., web-networked instrumentation) and systems (i.e., analytical data management software). Maximizing the value, however, is as much about exercising a mind-set of efficiency as it is about tracking raw numbers.
A new study found that groundwater overpumping can result in potentially dangerous water quality problems.
The phrase “Necessity is the mother of invention” has been definitively traced back to early 16th century England, and even attributed to Plato in the Latin form, “Mater artium necessitas.” In today’s world of water, necessity is also becoming a major factor in rising interest regarding potable water reuse. This is especially true in areas where changes in climate or usage demands have stressed traditional sources of supply, as evidenced by increasing numbers of applications worldwide. For those who work in a water-stressed environment, this article can provide added perspective on specific points of opportunity — and points of caution.
The analysis of water for volatile organic compounds is important due to their toxicity. The current methods for this determination lack of sensitivity, selectivity or capability for automation. This paper presents the new ISO 17943 Standard using Solid Phase Microextraction (SPME) and GC/MS. The sample preparation by SPME enables limits of detection and easy automation of the whole method. GC/MS provides the required sensitivity and selectivity. This ISO Standard was validated by an interlaboratory trial, which results confirm the outstanding performance for this method.
A wastewater treatment plant in Wasco, CA, is making use of artificial intelligence in water treatment.
For decades now, the ubiquity of the internet has been essential to modern life. Services like email, Google, and Amazon have connected us to the each other, the vast collective knowledge of humankind, and brought whatever we desire to our doorsteps with just a few motions of our fingers.
Washington utility enhances electricity infrastructure and improves customer service.
Today’s data driven utilities are paving the way for smart water systems through their use of location intelligence. Location influences all aspects of managing water — from protecting a sustainable supply to delivering safe drinking water. At Esri’s upcoming User Conference, which brings together more than 18,000 geographic information system (GIS) professionals from across the globe, utility companies will gather together to share successes and best practices regarding the myriad ways instituting spatial analytics technology has benefited their operations.
I had the pleasure of attending my 21st AWWA ACE last week in Las Vegas, NV. During this event, I had the opportunity to talk with many newcomers to the industry. One theme they kept bringing up was the amount of technology that is available to the water and wastewater industries. As someone who is now entering the ranks of the industry veterans, I feel obligated to share my insight on that singular observation: “Modern technology alone will not solve the problems of our current water and wastewater infrastructure.”
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey have published a major study of how pharmaceutical companies pollute the environment by sending their wastewater to treatment plants.
As the utilities sector enters a new era, customer engagement is not just encouraged; it is expected. In 2018, social media has become a crucial part of digital communications strategies, making customers more informed and engaged than ever before. According to We Are Social, the number of social media users worldwide in 2018 is 3.196 billion.
In a recent keynote speech at Wharton’s Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL), Innovyze CEO Colby Manwaring took the stage to address the current state of flood modeling techniques. The story? We can do better.
A new study has linked wastewater treatment plants to microplastic pollution in rivers in the United Kingdom.
The architects of Denver’s water infrastructure had a knack for predicting the future. They planned for the population of the city to grow.
Last week, thousands of water professionals met for the industry’s annual flagship conference. This is an important event at an important time as we give attention to our nation’s infrastructure. While roads and bridges are visible reminders of the importance of infrastructure, equally important components are out of sight, but they need to always be in our mind. These critical components are underground pipelines that provide water and wastewater service.
On July 26, 2013 Gainesville Regional Utilities discovered a pipeline failure at a butt-fused welded joint on a 36” HDPE Sewer Force Main. It was determined that the joint failed due to a combination of several incorrect construction methods used during the installation of the pipeline. Once discovered, GRU installed JCM 102-3600 x 18” wide Multi Band Universal Clamp Couplings (4-band clamp) to temporarily seal the leak while a permanent repair was considered.
Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico’s drinking water infrastructure last September.
The so-called brain-eating amoeba is back, once again creating challenges for water safety in Louisiana.
Significant innovation had occurred in the 17 years since the TrojanUV4000™ was installed at the Murfreesboro Water Resource Recovery Facility. Advancements associated with system efficacy, simplified maintenance, and energy efficiency had been introduced, all of which correlate to cost savings. Such advancements can all be found in the TrojanUVSigna™ – the UV system that was selected for the upgrade.
Communities around the world are facing a growing storm. Complex challenges including water scarcity, changing demographics, extreme weather patterns, and aging or overly stressed infrastructure are colliding to threaten critical water, energy, transport, enterprise and health networks. The water industry is in the eye of the storm.
Jet aeration systems are extremely efficient due to their high alpha factor and clean water oxygen transfer performance. Proper start-up, operation, and maintenance will ensure reliable service and a long life.
When California Governor Jerry Brown signaled lifted emergency conservation measures last year, many environmentalists worried that water savings achieved during the drought would dry up.
The New Rochelle Wastewater Treatment Plant is located in the Westchester County, New York, discharging to the Long Island Sound. It serves a population base of 65,000 people and is permitted to treat average flows of up to 20.6 MGD. Operating with primary clarification and pure oxygen-based activated sludge treatment since a 1979 upgrade, the plant only removed BOD and TSS from the wastewater.
A novel biological oxidation filtration treatment process was evaluated for removal of ammonia from a California groundwater source. In addition to ammonia, this groundwater had other contaminants such as iron, manganese, methane, hydrogen sulfide odor, color, high organic carbon, etc. As such, more conventional treatment processes such as breakpoint chlorination were deemed infeasible, and biological treatment was the preferred treatment alternative.
The existing water filtration facility in Clinton MA is a high rate, direct filtration process that has been on-line since 2006. The water filtration plant draws it raw water from the Wachusett Reservoir. Chemical feed systems are provided for chemically assisted filtration, pre-oxidation (potassium permanganate), coagulation, pH and alkalinity adjustment (sodium bicarbonate and sodium hydroxide), and disinfection (sodium hypochlorite).
Water, classified as one of the basic elements since ancient time, is so essential, so simple, yet can be so challenging to deliver at high quality in high volumes. Pursuing the “perfect” glass of water involves two major influences: 1) regulatory requirements and 2) aesthetics or organoleptic quality (i.e., taste, odor, appearance, etc.). To start, it helps to be blessed with the good fortune of good source water quality, but beyond that it comes down to how a water utility treats and “polishes” the final product. Even for utilities not totally obsessed with garnering national taste-test honors, here are several factors to be considered when searching for the perfect glass of water, and the role that turbidity measurement can play in them.
Turbidity, a measure of the cloudiness or haziness of a fluid, was originally intended as a qualitative measure of the aesthetics of drinking water. It is not a measure of actual particles in the water; it measures how much those particles affect light being transmitted through the water, or how that light reflects off particles in the water. Today’s turbidity designs and methods have been regimented in an attempt to bring quantitative consistency to the measurement for both aesthetic and pathogenic qualities of drinking water.
Conserving energy and saving costs are always on the minds of wastewater professionals. Aeration accounts for more than 50 percent of electrical usage at most treatment plants. Improved aeration efficiency will always work toward the goals of saving energy and reducing operating costs.
Ratepayers are debating the merits of a proposal for a new desalination plant in Orange County, CA.
Turbidity, as a measure of cloudiness or haze in water, has many useful applications for industrial processes, pharmaceutical manufacturing, environmental monitoring, and utility applications. Unlike general commercial applications, however, the use of turbidity readings in municipal drinking water treatment comes with unique demands and considerations related to regulatory compliance.
As industries expand, they typically need to increase the capacity of their wastewater treatment facilities. Increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, such as lower nitrogen limits, may also signal the need to boost treatment capacity. Installing additional tanks and larger equipment not only adds capital costs but increases operating costs as well.
September of 2017 was the busiest month of hurricane activity on record, according to the Weather Channel.
Turbidity measurement is both a nebulous, oft-misunderstood concept and the master link in a chain of events affecting U.S. EPA drinking water compliance. It can influence, or be influenced by, almost every other link in a water treatment process. Here is a quick overview of turbidity’s relationship to drinking water compliance standards and some tips for keeping a water treatment process in balance.
Access to clean, safe, fresh water is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. By some estimates over 1.5 billion people face water scarcity issues that directly threaten their health or economic welfare on a daily basis. More concerning, the impacts of climate change and global population growth are expected to exacerbate these issues to impact over 2.3 billion people by the year 2050. These sobering facts are why six of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are focused on providing access to clean, safe water. Part of solving this challenge is reducing industrial water consumption to conserve water resources.
Health regulators in Oregon are creating new regulations to protect drinking water from cyanotoxins.
I was having lunch with a former colleague a few months ago and the subject of produced water recycling came up. During the course of the conversation, he asked me: “Isn't this just a reverse Ponzi scheme with produced water? Ultimately, if they stop fracking, they [the operators] are going to have to deal with a lot of dirty water they don't need!”
A new research study links the use of oil and gas wastewater to the spread of air and water pollution.
The Aqua Caiman™ represents the next generation of multi-rake mechanical bar screens. In designing the screen, Parkson combined over 40 years of experience working on thousands of in-channel screen installations with in-depth market and engineering research. This allowed us to better understand the weaknesses of existing multi-rake and articulating rake screens.
Every water distribution utility has a strategy for infrastructure asset management and repair — from simply reacting to breaks, to scheduling main replacements based on system-specific history, to prioritizing infrastructure repairs based on mathematical calculations of risks and consequences.
It’s increasingly obvious to me that the gap in the general understanding of technology is continuously increasing with those that are not working in the space every day. I am referring to industrial technology versus the general consumer technology market.
LG Chem, supplier of the full line of NanoH2OTM reverse osmosis (RO) membranes, announced that over the last two years the company has accrued the most wins for new seawater RO membrane projects with more than 100,000 cubic meters per day capacity, based upon analysis of the database in DesalData published by Global Water Intelligence.
Utilis, an Israel-based remote sensing company that uses satellite data to detect drinking water leaks from underground pipes, was selected among hundreds of candidates as one of the World Economic Forum’s “technology pioneers”.
Recognizing the growing need for trained personnel throughout the pump industries and in the end-user community, the Hydraulic Institute, through its educational subsidiary, Pump Systems Matter (PSM) has created an Authorized Training Partner (ATP) program.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a $69.7M loan to the City of Omaha, Nebraska, to help finance its Saddle Creek Retention Treatment Basin. This marks the second loan to be issued under EPA’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) program.
Recently, Xylem, a leading global water technology company, published its 2017 Sustainability Report: "The Opportunity of a Lifetime," which outlines its commitment to partnering with customers and communities to pioneer new approaches to help solve the major water challenges of our time.
Duperon Corporation, leader in innovative preliminary liquids/solids separation systems, has announced that the discharge extension option for its patented washer compactor is now widely available.
Utilis has been chosen as top entry out of 65 projects from 23 different countries in the WaterFirst! Initiative, winning the 10,000 euro prize and recognition at Seeds&Chips, The Global Food Innovation Summit in MiCo, Milano Congressi.
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Rapidly produce FREE engineering designs for activated sludge wastewater treatment plants. |
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"17 years of 100% effectiveness from our previous TrojanUV system made us confident that upgrading with TrojanUV would continue this excellent performance." |
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The Golden Rule At Work Since 1905 |
Emerson Process Management Power & Water Solutions has a long and proud history of providing innovative solutions to help water and wastewater treatment facilities improve performance and decrease costs. With the release of two SmartProcess™ modules, the Economic Optimizer and the Global Performance Advisor, we continue that tradition
Desalitech ReFlex Max Reverse Osmosis systems are highly efficient, typically reducing brine waste by 50% to 75% and energy consumption by up to 35%.
Optional Component – Ensure that your critical alarm and process information finds you anywhere via text-to-voice phone calls, SMS text messages, emails and pagers. Dial into your application using your application security account to check levels, acknowledge alarms, change setpoints, or send commands to equipment.
Introducing SmartRun, a pump controller solution for pump stations with up to three alternating pumps. An integral part of the Flygt Experior® concept, this pump-control unit lets your pump take care of itself, freeing the pump station from debris, setting the optimal speed for energy efficiency and cost savings, as well as communicating with external monitoring equipment for peace of mind. SmartRun handles pump cleaning, pipe cleaning, sump cleaning, soft starts and stops; giving you to a new level of reliability and efficiency in an easy-to-install solution. The integrated intelligence and variable speed control mean it’s the perfect match for Flygt N-pumps – a combination that can potentially reach energy savings up to 50%
Infrastructure is complex. It must operate reliably without compromising health and safety standards, and comply with industry and environmental regulations. The Asset Performance Management solution allows you to capture and analyze historical and real-time operational and asset data to improve asset performance, reduce costs, and facilitate mission critical decision making in core business operations. With APM, you can develop consistent, optimized inspection and maintenance plans to mitigate operating risks and improve overall reliability, efficiency, and availability.
Aerzen’s AERprocess Dissolved Oxygen Control is an integrated solution for controlling the dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration in the activated sludge treatment process and the blowers used to generate the process air flow requirement. The AERprocess system is able to maintain DO concentrations at their set points using a smart and efficient control strategy.
The Headworks® TurboDrum IH™ horizontal drum screen is a unique, rotary, in-channel drum screen suitable for fine screening of sewage and industrial effluent. It is the ideal solution for large applications requiring fine screens with openings as fine as 1 mm and no carryover.
The Aqua Caiman™ represents the next generation of multi-rake mechanical bar screens. In designing the screen, Parkson combined over 40 years of experience working on thousands of in-channel screen installations with in-depth market and engineering research. This allowed us to better understand the weaknesses of existing multi-rake and articulating rake screens.
This video provides a detailed explanation of the process and benefits of the MRI Inclined Plate Settler System over conventional settling methods. MRI’s Inclined Plate Settlers and Hoseless Cable-Vac Sludge Collectors combine in this system to provide a reduced footprint, cost savings, zero energy usage, and superior efficiency and effluent quality.
Find out the importance of total cost of ownership in wastewater treatment applications and how Atlas Copco supports this approach.
The new Ovivo MBR Knowledge Center and MICRODYN-NADIR Manufacturing Plant for BIO-CEL MBR Membrane Modules is a 27,000-square-foot facility that houses a fully automated, cutting edge membrane module production line, as well as offices for Ovivo designers, engineers, and technicians.
See and hear from the Head of Business Unit Americas, from representatives of GF Piping Systems sales companies in the US, Canada and Mexico, and from representatives of each manufacturing company in the US. This video introduction includes footage from inside and out many of the GF facilities in North America.
This video provides a simple overview of the screen’s creation, function, features and benefits. From the beginning, Parkson engineers took it a step further by working with a leading design firm to rethink the industry standard step style screen from the ground up. They reviewed current offerings on the market and improved upon the common weak points. The result is the most durable escalating screen out there – the Aqua Rhino.
ABB is the best partner throughout the entire water cycle. From extraction and treatment, to distribution and the management of the wastewater process, ABB supplies an extensive range of reliable measurement products and solutions. With the most expertise in water and wastewater applications worldwide, ABB is the partner to help customers choose the optimal measurement solution precisely meeting their requirements. Learn more.
Providing expert insight into the most important topics in the water and wastewater industry.
Water Online is the leading source of technical information and thought leadership for the drinking water and wastewater treatment community. If you are an operator, municipal manager, engineering consultant or industrial plant manager involved in the design or maintenance of stormwater, clean water and wastewater systems, you now have access to a comprehensive Web community delivering the latest updates on water and wastewater collection, treatment and distribution technologies to give you the knowledge to succeed in your industry.
In providing this technical information, the site offers detailed coverage of the basic operational elements of the water and wastewater industry: the resource management, supply, treatment and distribution of drinking water and the collection, treatment and disposal of stormwater and wastewater. Water Online covers the many ancillary functions that are required such as: nutrient removal, contaminant removal, wastewater aeration, water instrumentation, utility management and automatic meter reading (AMR), water quality analysis, water membranes, reverse osmosis and desalination, drinking water disinfection, wastewater filtration, pumps, flow control & measurement, stormwater management and sludge conditioning and disposal.
Water Online serves the information needs of engineers, water management planners, operational managers, consultants, elected officials, government personnel and others who are involved in the municipal water supply industry, and the municipal and industrial wastewater treatment field. Reflecting the dynamic and interactive character of the Web, Water Online is the most convenient source of technical, operational, product, management and regulatory information available for the water and wastewater industry.
Please take a moment to join our community and discover the benefits of your free membership.
David Rager, Principal
