Blame our fast food diets or restaurants’ negligence for what’s going down the drain. Whatever the cause, fats, oil, and grease (FOG) accumulation has become a pervasive problem for wastewater treatment plant collection systems.
When one considers all the bell joints in a water distribution or wastewater collection system — caulk-joint or rubber-joint — and all the stresses to which they are subjected, it is a wonder there are not more leaks. Fortunately, bell-joint-leak clamps provide a reliable and relatively easy-to-install solution — if they are properly specified and installed. Here are some key points to consider when trying to remedy bell-joint leaks.
For most water or wastewater system operators, engineers, and repair crews, the only thing worse than facing a 24”-main emergency repair is facing an even larger one. To those who have never performed an emergency line stop and bypass, the idea of completing repairs with no service outage, no long-term shutdown, and no ‘boil water’ notice is almost beyond belief. To those who have, it’s a sigh of relief.
Among utilities concerned about resilience and response in natural disasters or other emergencies, precise asset inventory and mapping are high priorities. In truth, there is value in having the same information for everyday purposes as well. For anyone who has ever had a problem locating or tracking key water or wastewater system assets, here are several good reasons and ways to avoid a last-minute scramble.
Mapping the assets of a water treatment, water distribution, or wastewater collection and treatment system is just the means to an end. Maximizing value from that effort requires systematic planning and a healthy curiosity for looking into patterns of activity. Here are some considerations for turning raw asset data into more valuable benchmarks for better decision-making across multiple aspects of water operations.
Having to repair old, worn, broken, or leaking pipes is bad enough. Having to revisit the repair location a second time to refurbish the original fix is doubly frustrating. Here are some guidelines for getting the best results from pipeline repair efforts and enhancing the durability of the repair effort to match the anticipated service life of the pipeline itself.
Combined and sanitary sewer overflows are natural hazards for wastewater collection systems. Without a comprehensive solution to monitor troublesome conditions, overflows can be triggered with little warning and lead to expensive and embarrassing situations. Fortunately, versatile analytical systems that capitalize on existing wastewater collection infrastructure hold promise for avoiding such negative impacts.
The nexus of operations and asset management is coming as the water industry continues its digital transformation. Ongoing asset performance management informed by near-real-time data empowers a streamlined view of which assets are nearing the end of their useful lives, and which are operating at optimal efficiency. Read more to see how better data leads to better asset management for utilities of any size.
The water industry may be “all-in” on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. But are we getting a maximum return on this investment? Data analytics lead to points of action that can return big savings on data acquisition systems. Make sure you are getting the most from your SCADA system data for both immediate and long-term returns.
With a growing effort to ‘go digital’ in the global water industry, distribution and wastewater managers risk data inundation. But data sources from SCADA systems, pressure loggers, and stand-alone sensors can unlock valuable insights for more efficient operations and maintenance. Learn how to structure your system to avoid data flooding.
Most people understand the inherent benefits of plastic piping — chemical resistance, installation speed, ease of assembly, cost efficiency, longevity in corrosive, harsh exterior or underground environments, etc. Not everyone, however, fully appreciates the nuances of plastic piping design that help to maximize those benefits most efficiently.
Using historical data and Seeq analytical software, Nukon calculates when sewer blockages will occur up to 13 hours before occurrence, preventing spills.
Wastewater Collection System
Orenco Sewer™ (effluent-only sewer) is a cost-effective, environmentally sound wastewater collection system. With an Orenco Sewer, raw sewage flows from a house or business to a watertight underground tank. Only the filtered liquid portion is discharged (by either pump or gravity) to shallow, small-diameter collection lines that follow the contour of the land. Solids remain in the underground tank for passive, natural treatment and only need to be pumped every 10 to 12 years (depending on the number of residents and the tank volume).
Orenco Sewers take significantly less time to install than conventional sewers. And in an Orenco Sewer, material and excavation costs are reduced because the inexpensive collection lines are shallowly buried just below the frost line. Because only liquid is being pumped, system designers don’t need to worry about minimum velocities and associated grades. This simpler installation process causes less disruption to communities and allows businesses to operate normally during construction.
Mueller Co. recently announced a new H-306HP fabricated steel tapping sleeve. Designed for hot tapping ductile iron pipe and thick-wall C900 plastic pipe, the H-306HP is made from A36 fabricated steel and meets the requirements of AWWA C223. It features an integral bolt flange, Rilsan nylon coating, working pressures up to 300psi, and is available sizes from 4”-16”. The H-306HP is an economical tapping sleeve ideally suited for use with Mueller® CL-12, C1-36, and Mega-Lite drilling machines in less corrosive soil environments.
The Reliant Water Technologies SCOUT Hydro Profiling System is the answer to obtaining clear and concise shallow water survey data quickly and inexpensively. By not only providing a visual hydrographic ‘picture’ of everything underwater, in any shallow body of water, the SCOUT also provides the volume of sludge in the water body (as well as the volume of free water). The ‘picture’ provided is color enhanced in order to provide clear, definitive delineation of variable depths of sludge, or debris, and includes multi-point water depth over-lays.
The Wet Well Wizard is the only ‘one-size-fits-all’ wet well aeration system that has no moving parts, is completely non-corrosive, is simple to install, and utilizes no electricity underwater. It can be installed in 30 minutes and requires almost no maintenance.
The Hydro-Guard® HG-6 Hydrant Automatic Flushing System takes automatic and programmable flushing capabilities anywhere in the water distribution system where a fire hydrant is available.
Designed to increase chlorine residual consistency in potable water systems, Mueller® has added the HG-8 model to the expanding line of Hydro-Guard® Automatic Flushing Systems. Hydro-Guard HG-8 is installed below the frost-line, with all components easily accessible from the ground surface in the Mueller Thermal-Coil® Box. Dechlorinated discharge water is directed to the storm water drainage system or local retention pond. In addition, the product is designed to accept a 1-inch meter.
Maintain your drain with Mighty Mike® specialty tablets and cleaners!
Sauereisen SewerGard Industrial No. 210 is a novolac epoxy that is specifically formulated for industrial wastewater environments where plants and refineries treat contaminated water before it is sent to a municipal wastewater treatment plant.
Coping with service or repairs to aging pipeline infrastructure without disrupting customers is always a challenge. Chris Vazzana of Hydra-Stop has a better idea that includes the use of insertion valves, which enable water utilities to install a permanent valve into a live water main without ever shutting down the line. His discussion with the Water Talk moderators at WEFTEC 2019 details how the initial perception of insertion valves as a temporary measure is no longer true, and how these time-saving devices are now permanent assets that have passed AWWA testing, including burst testing and 500-cycle testing. Chris also describes the company’s newest 24” insertion valve, with an anecdote about saving a utility and 10,000 of its customers from a disruptive service shutdown.
There’s a new pipe joint in town. It’s the ALPHA restraint joint system launched recently by AMERICAN at WEFTEC 2016. According to Derek Scott, Marketing and Technical Manager with AMERICAN Flow Control, the new joint is easy to install with one stainless steel bolt at the top compared to the 8-bolts-on-each-end, traditional mechanical joint.
Susan Moisio, conveyance and storage leader with CH2M, sheds light on the conditions and obstacles facing municipalities as they struggle with stormwater management.
In this age of data acquisition, there is no corner on Earth that can’t be measured. In the water industry, that means plunging the deepest depths of our sewer systems.
GF Piping has a long history of operation, serving a wide variety of flow measurement and distribution needs in water and wastewater — and a long history at WEFTEC as well. In this video, GF Piping's Brian LaBelle, Director of Business Development - Water Treatment & Energy, provides a tour of the GF booth highlighting the company's newest and most popular offerings. Tune in to discover the latest technologies related to piping systems, flow meters, diaphragm valves, joints, couplings, and more.
Brian LaBelle, Director of Business Development for GF Piping Systems, provides Kevin Westerling with a tour of the Company’s WEFTEC.16 booth. Some of the new products on display include a dual channel transmitter, a series of electric actuators, a lug-style butterfly valve and a double containment piping system.
Kevin Westerling interviews Vaughan Harshman, a district manager with Evoqua about treating wastewater to remove hydrogen sulphide, a main cause of odor and corrosion in sewer systems. Harshman discusses a number of ways to treat hydrogen sulphide including nitrate-based treatments, pH shift technology, iron salts to precipitate the sulphide and oxidizers.
Water and wastewater utilities looking for ways to further extend the life of their pipe have a new tool – AMERICAN Zinc, an advancement in corrosion control for iron pipe. Zinc has proven to extend the life of iron pipe and protects millions of feet of cast and ductile iron pipe in corrosive environments around the world.
