If you're of the mind that the water industry is staid and stagnant, watch this interview with Xylem's Joe Vesey to have your mind changed. Vesey, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer with Xylem, describes the "massive disruption, massive change, [and] massive value creation" happening broadly across society and business, promising that it's also "going to happen in water." At Xylem, it has already begun.
For much of their history, utilities haven’t had to pay too much attention to customer experience (CX). The focus in many areas has tended to be on technologies that supported infrastructure and reduced operational costs.
Addressing past due accounts traditionally means sending out a crew to turn off the water and then sending them back to restore service when the bill is paid. This can create a less-than-ideal situation by generating significant labor costs while having a potentially negative impact on vulnerable populations. Fortunately, there is a newer method available to address revenue capture while providing enhanced customer service by avoiding a turnoff.
There’s been talk lately about empathy, its components and its general decline. A decline in empathy concerns me as an assistant professor in the University of Saskatchewan’s School of Environment and Sustainability: I study how people cope with water problems or learn to share scarce resources, like water, gas, oil, and energy.
If a water utility is going to use digital communication to enhance the customer experience, it needs to ensure that it does so as seamlessly as possible.
Finding new ways to capture and utilize data is important for utilities looking to improve operating efficiency and customer service. This interview with Frank Brooks and Dave Rubin from Aclara — a smart-infrastructure solutions partner for water, gas, and/or electric utilities — outlines ways to do both within a common infrastructure.
Smart meters offer a wealth of benefits for water utilities and their customers, but anyone performing an online search will quickly feel there is a sense of uproar over their use. The truth, however, is that public health officials around the world have deemed smart meters safe. Understanding what’s behind the objections and knowing how to respond is a key to winning support for the implementation of smart meter technology.
Environmental Health Assessments (EHAs) are used to better understand the range of possible effects of environmental factors on a community’s health and wellbeing. These assessments are defined by EPA researchers as “methodical evaluations of air, water, and soil pollution impacts on human health and the environment.”
It all started with Mark Twain. Or someone who actually wasn't Mark Twain after all.
Remember when Legos were introduced as simple rectangular and square plastic bricks you used to build walls and towers?
The NeoTech Aqua Disinfection Series is specially designed to disinfect water and is an essential component in advanced oxidation processes.
Supplying drinking water to the population and treating wastewater are two very important global challenges. On a daily basis, system planners, designers and operators are required to keep the global increase in water consumption under control in the face of growing water shortages and the salination of fresh water resources. As industry experts for water applications, we offer powerful, innovative technical solutions to assist you.
NeoTech Aqua Solutions provides the most efficient and cost-effective UV systems for destroying Total Organic Carbons (TOC’s) in water. Whether your destroying NDMA, 1,4-dioxane, TCE, MTBE, urea, endocrine disruptors or other organics, only NeoTech Aqua provides ultraviolet TOC reduction with a treatment chamber optimized for low pressure mercury lamps. As a result, NeoTech Aqua’s UV systems achieve a three times greater TOC reduction per kilowatt compared to standard UV systems, reducing our clients’ costs and energy consumption. In addition to efficiently generating ample 185 nm UV for TOC reduction, NeoTech Aqua’s TOC reduction systems also generate significant levels of 254 nm UV which serve as a powerful disinfectant, providing you both TOC-free and organism-free product water.
The BMS range is a new range of booster modules for reverse osmosis and ultra-filtration applications that improve efficiency with a directly coupled pump powered by a permanent magnet motor and VFD.
Containerized seawater desalination solutions ensure water availability in a wide range of applications.
The DE NORA TETRA™ Modular DeepBed Filter Plant from De Nora Water Technologies is designed as a competitive filtration plant for tertiary effluent from small to medium size sewage works. The Modular DeepBed Filter utilizes the technology of DeepBed filtration that has made the TETRA filter such a successful tertiary treatment process over many years in Europe and the United States.
Veolia has developed ShaleFlow™, a cost-effective transportable solution for reuse of produced water and flowback water from hydraulic fracturing operations. This compact, modular system utilizes proven technologies designed to enable reuse with the flexibility to be moved as the field is developed.
Finding new ways to capture and utilize data is important for utilities looking to improve operating efficiency and customer service. This interview with Frank Brooks and Dave Rubin from Aclara — a smart-infrastructure solutions partner for water, gas, and/or electric utilities — outlines ways to do both within a common infrastructure.
No utility wants to issue a Boil Water Notice, but if it does happen, it’s important to get it right. Even if your utility has had a long, unblemished record of delivering high-quality water, a mishandled contamination event will leave a bad taste in your customers’ mouths (so to speak).
Wastewater service charges vary considerably across EPA regions and States. That’s one of the key findings from the National Association of Clean Water Agencies’ (NACWA) Cost of Clean Water Index. If you live in Montana, Wyoming or the Dakotas (EPA Region 8), your average service charge of $261 a year is considerably less than the $884 your fellow Americans up in New England (EPA Region 1) are paying. As you can imagine, much of the difference is to do with population size and geography.
It has been 32 years since the amended Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) banned the installation of lead pipes in water systems nationwide. Unfortunately, that decision has not yet translated into action for every lead service line (LSL) installed before that point. Fortunately, someone has done a lot of legwork toward getting a handle on that process. Here is a preview of the help they have to offer.
Eileen O’Neill, Executive Director of the Water Environment Federation (WEF), joined Water Talk from WEFTEC — the world's largest annual water quality event — to discuss WEF initiatives, the state of the water/wastewater industry, and challenges and opportunities for the future.
Fresh water sources around the globe are becoming increasingly stressed due to population growth, industry use, and changing climate patterns. These stresses drive the need to make the most out of every drop of water available. Water treatment systems inherently produce a waste stream that contains contaminants removed during the treatment process. This waste stream can often constitute 20-30% of the total water fed to the treatment system, representing a significant loss of a precious resource both in human and economic terms. Minimizing this waste stream is a key part of the solution to solving the water crisis for both industry and people.
For some water providers, carefree days of producing pure, fresh water from groundwater sources are long gone. Years of evolving chemical complexity, industrial operations, and short-sighted disposal methods have taken a toll on groundwater sources. The lowering of maximum contaminant levels (MCL) for contaminants such as chromium and the drilling of new wells into different geologic structures add to source water pressures. Fortunately, new technologies are helping water providers make the best of a challenging situation across a wide range of contaminants.
Industrial operations across the gamut leverage boiler water, the liquid that passes through a boiler and is converted into steam, thus powering operations around the world. But not all of them do as much as they could to ensure peak boiler water efficiency. Through the proper treatment considerations and quality measurement knowledge, every industrial player can make the most of this central process.
The Baia Mare Aurul gold mine in North Western Romania suffered a historic catastrophe in January 2000, when its dam burst, streaming out 100,000 cubic meters of waste water, largely contaminated with cyanide, commonly used in the process of mining gold, into tributaries of the Tisza River, a major waterway in Hungary.
World Water Day (Thursday, March 22nd this year) does a great job of focusing our attention on water issues. And especially with storms on the East Coast and drought in the West, not to mention the looming possibility that officials will have to shut off the taps in Cape Town sometime this summer, a lot of the messaging around water is pretty much like being smothered in a wet blanket.
Water utilities with highly successful monitoring programs tend to share a common trait: they have a well-defined plan for calibration that emphasizes frequency and tracking. However, when done properly, this process is time-consuming and often leads to unnecessary labor and downtime. The good news is that advanced metering technology is available for plants to get a better handle on the instrument’s performance with significantly less effort.
Following these five rules will ensure that OOE investigations are conducted in a scientific and meaningful manner, with each instance providing a genuine opportunity for improvement.
Natural gas compressor stations have to comply with new EPA regulations on inspection, known as Quad OA. Optical gas imaging provides an efficient, cost-effective means to meet the requirements.
Everyone wants pathogen-free drinking water, and adding chlorine is a great way to get it. Unfortunately, the dirtier a water treatment plant (WTP)’s raw water inflow — in terms of natural organic matter (NOM) or microbial organisms — the more disinfection byproducts (DBPs) the chlorination process will generate in the form of trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs). Those DBPs increase the risk of non-compliance with the U.S. EPA’s Disinfectants and Disinfection Byproducts Rules. Choosing the right instrumentation to measure NOM through spectral absorption coefficients (SACs) can have a big impact on treatment strategies — in terms of both costs and compliance performance.
All the effort and expense required to produce high-quality water can be for naught if the distribution system cannot maintain appropriate pressure to deliver it efficiently, at a reliable flow rate. Simply pumping more pressure into the system is not the answer. Learn how new pressure monitoring options make it easier to track pressure in every zone to deliver customer satisfaction at peak energy efficiency.
The City of Riverdale was running into issues with arsenic, color and iron treatment system at their Well 4 site, so they conducted a pilot test with the help of Loprest.
The City of Paramount conducted a pilot study for arsenic, manganese and iron treatment system at their Well 15 site. The onsite pilot test was designed to demonstrate the performance of the Loprest Water Treatment Company treatment process proposed for the new treatment plant.
Trojan Technologies has been providing treatment solutions for the water/wastewater market for four decades, but 2018 stands out as the year Stephen Bell joined as its new president. Water Online had opportunity to catch up with Bell at WEFTEC, where he talked about the company's culture, philosophy, and drive to innovate. One particular innovation is the TrojanUVFlex, a drinking water disinfection and advanced oxidation system for both potable and non-potable reuse applications, as well as the destruction of chemicals such as 1,4-dioxane. Tune in for an introduction to Bell and a summary of Trojan's unique technology.
A potable water plant in Eastern Angelina County, Texas, serves over 2,000 rural customers.
Iron, manganese, arsenic and hydrogen sulfide are indigenous to numerous groundwater aquifers. With the exception of arsenic, these constituents are more prevalent in deeper aquifers that are devoid of dissolved oxygen. This report summarizes the results and conclusions of a groundwater treatment pilot test program. This pilot test program was undertaken to determine the removal performance for arsenic, manganese and iron at the City of Merced’s Well 20 site. Chemical treatment processes required were also studied.
Nature has long provided guidance to simple and sustainable ways to manage environmental challenges. Biological treatment of potable water is no exception. As more water is required to support human activity worldwide, sources once considered too contaminated or expensive to treat are quickly becoming necessary options. For groundwater contaminant removal, once again, the laws of nature point the way.
In the Middle East, incineration is a popular method for treating spent caustic, the harsh byproduct of ethylene production. However, incineration can be problematic when treating wastewater with a high total dissolved solids content. Wet air oxidation (WAO) offers a solid alternative with potentially lower overall lifecycle costs.
Potable reuse of wastewater has gone by many different names, some of them unflattering, like “toilet to tap.” Despite the clear benefits of water reuse, this so-called “ick factor” has slowed the adoption of technology that can transform wastewater into drinking water.
This article is intended to highlight inconsistencies in testing elastomer vial stoppers — and to drive the collaborative development of a more sensitive, harmonized particle count method.
