San Francisco may be best known as a hotbed for the cultural changes of the 1960s and as a hub for some of today’s leading technologies. Now, it is bringing that cutting-edge reputation to bear in the water recycling space.
Following a fire at a major bourbon distillery in Kentucky this month, water treatment workers stepped up to keep a bad situation from becoming even worse.
Are your current pressure-boosting pumps the best design for your operating conditions? Are they maximizing value from your operating budget with peak efficiency? How can you know for sure, and what can you do if they are not? Here are some guidelines for evaluating performance efficiency in pressure-boosting applications and for choosing the best pump configurations for new or existing applications.
In water testing, readings that we believe to be reliable indicators are not always what they seem. Water that exhibits certain chemical or electrical characteristics at laboratory temperatures can provide entirely different readings in the field. Here is a quick review of what to look for in common water tests and why to consider automatic temperature compensation in the instruments used to collect them.
Rising temperatures and precipitation combined with increasing nutrient runoff from human activity are elevating challenges in water treatment efforts. In some cases, that means increased threats to drinking water quality. In others, it means increasingly stringent nutrient discharge levels. Either way, taking the nutrient monitoring battle out to the field can help in waging a better fight at the treatment plant.
The U.S. House has approved an amendment to the annual defense spending bill that would target per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
Are “ghost forests” a sign of things to come? Rising sea levels and superstorm tidal surges are already impacting coastal areas, with rising salinity levels affecting some drinking water sources. Coastal water utilities are not the only ones that have to worry about salinity, however, as high concentrations of winter storm road treatments, gas drilling, and mining can also generate elevated salinity levels in surface water sources.
Everyone wants good-tasting water, but most water treatment plants (WTPs) are hostages to the composition of their local source water supplies. One of the components involved in taste is total dissolved solids (TDS), which can affect both the acceptability of finished water taste and its likelihood to corrode or clog pipes and fixtures. Here’s how to quantify the problem and what to do about it if it is excessive.
Several advancements in solar technology may provide the answer to drinking water production in distressed regions of the world.
For those in the drinking water and wastewater treatment space, the climbing temperatures in summer months can bring with them an obstacle that seems to get worse every year — harmful algal blooms.
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.
It’s common to see “BPA Free” labels on water bottles and other containers, a response to consumers who have grown increasingly wary of the contaminant. However, testing for BPAs that may have found their way into drinking water sources has traditionally been cumbersome and expensive, so municipalities could be exposing their customers to unsafe levels. The good news is that newer advancements are making it easier to use existing technologies to monitor for the pollutant.
The Ohio River, which runs through or borders six different states, will no longer have mandatory pollution standards overseen by a multi-state agency.
Solving water scarcity issues can be an expensive proposition. Desalination, for instance, is a notoriously energy-intensive process that requires significant investment in technology and equipment.
Over the past 10 years, DC Water has become the harbinger of the modern water utility. It’s often unconventional approach to tackling age-old problems usually elicits one of two responses from other utility professionals. The first response is one of resignation — if only I had the budget that size permits, I’d be able to do similar things. And the second is one of awe — there’s no way I have the amount of gumption to convince regulators or customers that I have a better way.
Let’s start by taking the subject at face value. Quarterly business reviews (QBRs) offer valuable face-to-face time with clients, and that plays an important role in relationship and retention. The QBR is a chance to check your customer’s pulse and an opportunity to demonstrate value. Tell them how many updates you’ve pushed, bugs you’ve squashed, threats you disarmed, and so forth. Here are a few pointers for making a QBR productive and profitable.
BYOD is a topic often discussed in the context of electronic clinical outcome assessments (eCOA) but there has been limited use of BYOD in regulatory studies to date and common perception is that delay in uptake is due to measurement equivalence and technical and practical issues. In order to identify and assess the perceived barriers and challenges with the use of BYOD for eCOA, ICON in association with Medidata and mProve Health conducted a recent survey. Read how commonly-cited concerns around the use of patients’ own devices are not as great a deterrent to adoption as originally thought.
The good news about extending water service connections is that they represent new revenue opportunities. The bad news is that they can be costly and disruptive in terms of having to shut down the system and open it up. Before planning new service connections or extensions, compare how the following characteristics of hot-tapping with fabricated tapping sleeves can save both time and money in the long run.
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.
The fallout from Flint, Michigan’s lead-contaminated drinking water has been far-flung and long-lasting.
Utility managers are continually challenged to run water systems in the most efficient manner. Reducing non-revenue water (NRW) is an important component for system efficiency. In many states, regulators are placing caps on NRW or requiring reductions in the amount of NRW. Accurate and well-planned flow measurement can be used to locate areas of water leakage and reduce NRW.
In spite of the recent abundance of water, many of California’s aquifers continue to balance on the edge of water scarcity. Decades of overpumping have reduced the amount of ground water available to supplement surface water resources diminished by drought. The Pure Water Monterey Ground Water Replenishment Project (Monterey Pure), addressed the need to replenish a local aquifer, by piloting Advanced Water Treatment (AWT) processes, to determine the best method to convert secondary wastewater into a pure water resource.
From the largest metropolitan utilities to the smallest water systems, leaks are a problem everywhere. Because it’s difficult to raise consumer prices to offset the losses, non-revenue water has a direct impact on the bottom line of municipal water systems. However, utility managers now have an opportunity to reverse the problem with advanced flow meter technology that combines multiple measurements.
In 2007, White House Utility District (WHUD), a water utility serving approximately 90,000 consumers and businesses in Tennessee, faced a dilemma: how to meet a projected growing demand for water within the budget and capital constraints faced by municipal and mid-sized utilities everywhere.
The NuPower™ L60T01 is a L- and S-band solid-state power amplifier designed to deliver over 60 Watts of RF power in the 960 to 1390 MHz frequency range to extend the operational range of airborne telemetry links and transmitters. Based on the latest GaN technology, the amplifier’s 25% power efficiency at rated power and <10 in3 form factor make it ideal for size, weight, and power-constrained airborne RF telemetry, tactical communication systems, and electronic warfare systems.
The concept of the Electric Vehicle (EV) market is hard to miss nowadays. We increasingly see EVs on the streets and charging stations are becoming part of the landscape. Knowles offers an array of capacitors for electric vehicle drivetrains.
Ross ERP Software is built specifically for process manufacturers that want to streamline operations, quickly bring new products to the marketplace, and easily ramp up production, while cutting costs and complying with ever more stringent retailer requirements and federal regulations.
Photron offers the FASTCAM Mini CX camera designed to deliver an exceptional combination of resolution, frame rate, light sensitivity, and durability in a compact, stand-alone package for both on-board and off-board vehicle safety testing. The camera provides image quality with 1080 HD resolution at 1,000 frame per second and light sensitivity of ISO 5,000 color and ISO 10,000 monochrome.
Sky5 is a suite of solutions designed to support 5G wireless communications and enable a multitude of new and previously unimagined applications across mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems.
Model NU-5741 is a Direct Heat CO2 Incubator featuring precise Humidity control through the use of a water reservoir and sensor as well as Oxygen control for hypoxia research by injecting Nitrogen gas to meet set point to suppress Oxygen levels.
With memories of the wettest U.S. spring on record still fresh, it seems strange to hear that in many parts of the nation, groundwater supplies — the water stored underneath our feet, in rocks, and sediments — are lower than normal. This includes places with wet climates, such as southern Georgia, coastal Maryland, and Cleveland.
A Q&A with scientist Jeff Urban, who explains forward osmosis and how Berkeley Lab is pushing the frontiers of this emerging technology
Isn’t it ironic that our beautiful blue planet, covered 70 percent with water, is struggling to meet citizens’ water needs? Yes, and the reasons are obvious. Out of the Earth’s total water, less than 3 percent is available as freshwater, and a portion of it is actually accessible. Uneven distribution of fresh waterbodies and population across the globe further skew water supply and demand ratios. Also, climate change, deforestation, desertification, droughts, floods, and depletion of natural waterbodies resulting from anthropogenic and natural activities add to these miseries.
As we celebrate Smart Irrigation Month, it's a great time to highlight not only smart technologies, but the smart people and smart decisions behind them. One remarkably smart tool that ties all three of those elements together is the Irrigation Consumer Bill of Rights by Dr. Charles Burt of the Irrigation Training and Research Center (ITRC) at the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo.
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.
Nestled in the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York, the town of Owasco is a popular vacation spot. With about 4,000 residents, the town, along with the nearby community of Auburn, relies on Owasco Lake for its drinking water. In 2016, Owasco and Auburn detected algal toxins in their finished water for the first time. With the busy summer tourist season quickly approaching, GHD contacted Calgon Carbon.
There is little doubt about the importance of taking turbidity readings as part of drinking water treatment. However, there are certain misperceptions about the associated requirements and procedures needed to confirm the validity of those readings. The major points of confusion seem to revolve around perception of the terms “approved,” “calibration,” and “validation.” Here is a quick synopsis on what you really need to know about meeting U.S. EPA Method 180.1: Determination of Turbidity by Nephelometry for accurate turbidity readings.
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.
Microbiological contamination is at the top of the CDMO threat list. A CDMO needs to have clearly defined procedures and allow client access to data.
Just as different water utilities use different processes for turning raw source water into potable drinking water, so too do they take different routes to account for, and bill for, their output. Here is an overview of a cellular-based approach to collecting and leveraging data from water distribution operations that can achieve the greatest business advantage.
San Jose Water Company (SJWC) provides drinking water for over a million people in the greater San Jose Metropolitan region and is a recognized leader in drinking water treatment and distribution system water quality management. With over 90 water storage facilities in service, planned maintenance and rehabilitation of capital assets is a key component of SJWC’s CIP program.
From the largest metropolitan utilities to the smallest water systems, leaks are a problem everywhere. Because it’s difficult to raise consumer prices to offset the losses, non-revenue water has a direct impact on the bottom line of municipal water systems. However, utility managers now have an opportunity to reverse the problem with advanced flow meter technology that combines multiple measurements.
The cost of operations is a rising concern for many water utilities, in addition to the chief concern of treating to regulations and protecting the environment. What may be overlooked, however, is the importance of power management to help achieve these objectives. In this Water Talk interview, Eaton Corporation's Joel Benzing explains how intelligent electrical infrastructure can help enhance plant productivity and efficiency by aiding, optimizing, and protecting the facility's equipment as well as its people.
A global beverage company produces, markets, sells and distributes a variety of beverages including beer, malt, soft drinks, fruit juices and mineral water. The brewery has utilized several types of SITRANS F flowmeters from Siemens to regulate all aspects of the brewing process for more than a decade, including SITRANS F C Coriolis meters to monitor the sugar concentration in wort prior to fermentation.
A demonstration of the development of a robust, high-quality, and automated Multi-D chromatography purification utilizing both tandem and multi-column configurations using ChromLab™ Software on an NGC Chromatography System.
IPR'S CIPP liner system for gravity-flow sewers and culverts is the most proven, cost-effective trenchless pipeline rehabilitation system in the industry. It is also the most widely specified form of trenchless pipeline rehabilitation.
Discover how integrated membrane system designs can maximize the operating stability of EDI systems and reduce mixed bed regeneration frequency.
