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.
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 more a water utility knows about its current operations, the better equipped it can be to make more informed decisions about upcoming maintenance and capital replacement programs. Here are several key approaches to identifying cost-effective ways to make merging historical asset data and current operational data as the next step toward building a stronger, more resilient utility.
In many water industry applications, a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system is considered the heartbeat of the operation. As a result, many data management decisions revolve around what the SCADA system can or cannot do and how big of a deal and expense it is to change. Can’t there be a way to devise more ROI-responsive data solutions, without having to change SCADA solutions?
For all the talk about scarcity of source water, funding, and the next-generation labor pool in the water industry, there is one area that is not falling short — data collection. Here is how water and sewer districts inundated with data collected from a variety of central control systems, pressure loggers, and stand-alone sensors can streamline and manage that flood of data in ways that cut their major concerns down to size.
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.
Leprino Foods, the world's largest mozzarella cheese producer, operates two plants that share one wastewater pipeline – a 16” SDR11 High Density Polyethylene Pipeline (operating at approximately 160 PSI). During dirt work an “auger” hit the wastewater pipeline and drilled an 8” diameter hole in the line. Leprino needed immediate access to a repair fitting for this line.
The Great Lakes region was blessed with abundant freshwater for its rivers and lakes. Water as a resource and method of transportation were an important factor in Akron, OH, blossoming as one of America’s early manufacturing hubs during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Among the pump stations managed by Branford, CT, is a long-term problematic station located at Burban Street. There were two primary problems at this station: 1) clogging from modern day trash and raggy, stringy materials, and 2) fats, oils, and grease (FOG) from a nearby nursing home and restaurants, which accumulate and float on the water surface, resulting in a horrendous mess.
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.
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.
Hampton Roads Sanitation District is using flow monitoring to help get inflow and infiltration (I&I) out of the sewers. Learn why this method will save the municipality millions versus alternative approaches.
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.
