The city of Limassol in Cyprus was experiencing an increasingly severe water shortage, with the growing population and expanding tourist industry placing extra pressure on existing supply. An aquifer in a residential neighborhood was seen as a potential water source, but had high levels of salts and nitrates. The Cyprus Water Development Department (WDD) awarded Fluence a Build-Own-Transfer (BOT) contract to implement a cost-effective solution.
The city of Virovitica in Croatia is located near to the Hungarian border. Its water works company Virkom serves approximately 20.000 people daily with drinking water. In order to assure required European potable water standards, Virkom decided in 2008 to replace the existing old sand filtration units (total flow rate approx. 320 m³/h) by new ones.
In an effort to reduce reliance on dwindling surface and groundwater supplies in Texas, the Colorado River Municipal Water District (CRMWD) constructed a new Raw Water Production Facility (RWPF) in Big Spring. Big Spring is a 27,000-member community located in West Texas approximately 300 miles west of Dallas. This RWPF treats secondary wastewater to a standard that allows it to be re-introduced directly into the raw water supply for the water treatment plants of Big Spring, Odessa, and other communities in the region.
Ozone disinfection of water has been a common practice for nearly 100 years. By Thoram Charanda, Chief Scientist, Guardian Research & Development Labs and Louis LeBrun, PE, Vice President, Pinnacle Ozone Solutions, LLC
A self-contained hypochlorite skid-mounted chlorination system injecting sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) can solve (at least) 5 major problems afflicting many small commercial, industrial or community water systems.
Many thermal mass flow meters are of the insertion type. As a starting point, proper insertion depth and straight run per the manufacturer’s recommendations should be adhered to.
Once a pH sensor is installed in the process and operating, how do you determine when it is time to take the sensor out of the process and do a cleaning, or a calibration? Does one perform both a cleaning and a calibration or just a cleaning, or just a calibration? By Fred Kohlmann - Analytical Product Business Manager
As global conditions place more stress on water resources, a great deal of attention is being paid to water reuse technologies, particularly those that facilitate the reuse of the next level of difficult-to-treat or highly variable raw water sources.
Water and wastewater treatment professionals are constantly looking for as much information as possible about the quality of their water. If knowledge is power, then understanding the properties of their water is key to running an effective and efficient facility.
Keeping the water in our lakes, rivers, and streams clean requires monitoring of water quality at many points as it gradually makes its way from its source to our oceans. Over the years ever increasing environmental concerns and regulations have heightened the need for increased diligence and tighter restrictions on wastewater quality.
Chlorine has long been used as a primary disinfection method for many water and wastewater treatment applications. However, there is growing concern about the harmful DBP’s produced by the use of chlorine.
In order to reduce the formation of harmful disinfection byproducts in drinking water, alternative disinfectant use has become increasingly widespread. Monochloramine is a leading alternative disinfectant that offers advantages for municipal water. This tech brief details the removal of monochloramine using activated carbon.
Total organic carbon (TOC) testing is the traditional method for determining organic matter in water. However there is a far more practical, affordable and often more useful way to measure organic matter. UV absorbance testing (UVA) is rapidly becoming the preferred method of measuring organics even when the levels of organics being measured are very small.
With the increasing awareness about the negative effects of organics within the water and wastewater treatment process along with increasingly strict water quality regulations, the need for more effective organics removal is becoming more important.
Process design in water treatment is historically confined to proprietary or user-defined spreadsheets on a unit operation basis, with users manually adding results from each unit process upstream into the next operation.
Today’s drinking water plants have many challenges to meet as they produce water for a fast-growing and increasingly demanding population.
The oil and gas industry has utilized various deaeration technologies for many years to remove dissolved gases, particularly oxygen, from injection water. In many hydrocarbon recovery and water processes, degassing is necessary in order to minimize environmental impact, improve operating efficiency, avoid process issues and help protect system components.
Sampling and laboratory testing are major responsibilities for water professionals. Test results are used for process control, and ultimately to determine that water is safe for drinking, reuse, or discharge to the environment. Regulatory agencies rely on reported results for proof of permit compliance. So, obtaining representative, properly collected and preserved samples is the first critical step to ensure accurate test results.
Water and wastewater utilities must monitor numerous aspects of their systems on a continuous basis. Various instruments are used to measure these processes, producing volumes of data every day. Endress+Hauser is a leading supplier of products and services for process measurement and automation. Water Online spoke with three of Endress+Hauser's experts to find out how data loggers and managers can save costs while providing effective data management.
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.
By now, just about everyone in the U.S. has heard about Flint, Michigan’s water woes. Despite the many issues raised by that incident, urban water systems are not the sole reason the 2017 Report Card from the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the U.S. drinking water infrastructure an overall “D” grade. Hidden within that disheartening rating are the harsh realities faced by rural water systems.
For many people, hot springs conjure up thoughts of cleansing and purity. For centuries, humans have visited hot springs to relax and recover. But as with any natural water body, hot springs can also exhibit biota that can infect and in severe cases kill.
Ever since Coriolis flow measurement technology achieved mainstream appeal, industry has been fervently striving to take advantage of its benefits. And while Coriolis is clearly a highly advantageous solution for many crucial flow measurement applications, it is not without flaw.
Drinking Water Treatment involves the removal of pathogens and other contaminants from source water in order to make it safe for humans to consume. Treatment of public drinking water is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. Common examples of contaminants that need to be treated and removed from water before it is considered potable are microorganisms, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals and radionuclides.
There are a variety of technologies and processes that can be used to decontaminate or treat water in a drinking water treatment plant before the clean water is pumped into the water distribution system for consumption.
The first stage in treating drinking water is often called pretreatment and involves screens to remove large debris and objects from the water supply. Aeration can also be used in the pretreatment phase. By mixing air and water, unwanted gases and minerals are removed and the water improves in color, taste and odor.
The second stage in the drinking water treatment process involves coagulation and flocculation. A coagulating agent is added to the water which causes suspended particles to stick together into clumps of material called floc. In sedimentation basins, the heavier floc separates from the water supply and sinks to form sludge, allowing the less turbid water to continue through the process.
During the filtration stage, smaller particles not removed by flocculation are removed from the treated water by running the water through a series of filters. Filter media can include sand, granulated carbon or manufactured membranes. Filtration using reverse osmosis membranes is a critical component of removing salt particles where desalination is being used to treat brackish water or seawater into drinking water.
Following filtration, the water is disinfected to kill or disable any microbes or viruses that could make the consumer sick. The most traditional disinfection method for treating drinking water uses chlorine or chloramines. However, new drinking water disinfection methods are constantly coming to market. Two disinfection methods that have been gaining traction use ozone and ultra-violet (UV) light to disinfect the water supply.