It has been said that the unseen and untreated can break down any system — this phrase could not be more accurate than in the world of wastewater treatment when considering the infiltration of grit into a system. Infiltration happens in the collection system, whether it’s from living on the coast, aging infrastructure or just plain old build up over time.
For many applications, water should be free — or nearly free — of organic compounds. In drinking water, the impact is optimal taste, appearance, and safety. While the problem of organics finding their way into source water continues to grow, newer monitoring technology is making it easier for water treatment plants to rapidly detect the substances and apply the appropriate fix.
Source water monitoring is commonly viewed as a sophisticated and expensive task requiring extensive labor and high-tech equipment. Budget-minded municipal water authorities therefore tend to see it as unnecessary unless there’s a significant, imminent threat to source water quality. However, there are low-cost — in many cases, no-cost — methods to monitor source water to determine if looming issues warrant extra attention.
Business people love to talk about "disruption." They pride themselves on eating their competitors' lunch. Where their markets used to be about raving fans, now it's about inspiring craving fans, fueled by "hunger marketing" and the fear of missing out. There's a lot of dog-eat-dog philosophy...which is why it's important for companies to be willing to cannibalize their own technologies.
Traditional processes used to remove iron and manganese from groundwater have commonly included oxidation with chlorine followed by a filter with sand or other media.
The U.S. EPA has released details about a “Water Reuse Action Plan” meant to encourage water recycling through facilitated discussions between federal and state stakeholders and the treatment sector.
The City of Silverton is known as Oregon’s Garden City and sends one million gallons a day of treated effluent to the Oregon Gardens, returning the remainder to Silver Creek.
There are many facets to industrial processes — raw materials, skilled labor, well-designed equipment, and sound methodologies. Optimizing those manufacturing processes requires consistent, reliable feedback on performance efficiency and output quality. Here are several guidelines for implementing continuous monitoring to keep process integrity at optimum levels.
Increased treatment processes apparently haven’t been enough to curb levels of a potentially dangerous contaminant in a North Carolina water supply.
Potable reuse offers a massive opportunity to recover water from the wastewater process, but projects face a variety of barriers to getting off the ground. Most successful early adopters engaged early with their constituents and implemented smaller-scale demonstration projects that were accessible to the public to prove the technology and process.
Large-scale water-reuse treatment plants have had sustainable impact in populated areas where the volume of water to be treated and reused in a concentrated area makes them practical. Today, the flat-sheet membrane aerated biofilm reactor (MABR) technology that is delivering high-quality wastewater treatment to remote locations is poised to realize the promise of sustainable water reuse in those same locations.
In a nod to just how important water quality has become for Lake Erie — a source body that has been plagued by toxic algal blooms for years — locals have decided to grant it the type of legal rights usually reserved for human beings.
An aquifer recharge plan in Virginia will now move forward under stricter legislative and scientific oversight.
Secondary metabolites of algae — including algal toxins and taste and odor compounds triggered by a harmful algal bloom — can find their way into source water, creating the risk that they will ultimately reach the water treatment plant to cause water-quality problems. Here is a checklist of considerations for mitigating those effects through cost-effective oxidation, or combined oxidization processes, across a variety of source water conditions.
With just over half a year to go until the divorce date, and roughly two months until European Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier’s self-imposed October deadline for a Brexit deal, it has started to feel like we are finally seeing some concrete progress when it comes to Brexit.
The OSIsoft PI System is at the center of Thames Water’s “intelligence Hub” (iHub), which merges disparate data sources to drive operational performance. Thames Water can now garner critical insights from its network of water delivery and sewage waste removal systems that span the greater London area.
I recently had the chance to sit down with Pete Tantillo, CFO and COO, and Elliot Goldman, Finance Director for RapidRatings. RapidRatings provides sophisticated analysis of the financial health of public and private companies around the world. The company’s analytics system provides predictive insights into third-party partners, suppliers, vendors, customers, and securities issuers, and is transforming the way the world’s leading companies manage enterprise and financial risk.
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.
In 1993, the Duperon® FlexRake® entered the market as the first multi-rake wastewater screen to operate without a lower sprocket, bearing or track. Designed by Duperon Corporation founder Terry Duperon, the patented equipment reflected his belief that mechanics should operate as simply as possible. The result was a mechanically-cleaned bar screen that consisted of just three main components — screen, raking device and drivehead. Despite its simplicity, the unit quickly proved to be far more reliable than other, more complicated designs. Paired with the industry’s first five-year warranty in wastewater, the Duperon® FlexRake® soon became a benchmark for low maintenance and ease of operation.
Similar to other deskless industries, there are unique employee engagement challenges facing the utilities industry brought on by advances in technology and a shortage of qualified workers. The latest employee engagement statistics reveal that only 52% of utility workers are engaged. With many changes happening in the industry and an often stressful and even dangerous work environment, it’s no surprise that employee engagement is a challenge.
While utilities use sophisticated systems to supply clean water as well as collect and treat wastewater, the effort to manage incidents and outages leaves room for improvement. Water utilities often rely on manual processes to handle customer reports of leaks, loss-of-service or quality issues. But in many cases, the manual approach can hamper the effort to correlate problem reports to specific assets and locations. The result can be slow response and subpar interaction with customers and other agencies. The solution has emerged from a parallel utility: electricity.
Potable reuse offers a massive opportunity to recover water from the wastewater process, but projects face a variety of barriers to getting off the ground. Most successful early adopters engaged early with their constituents and implemented smaller-scale demonstration projects that were accessible to the public to prove the technology and process.
Driven by tight budgets and competing needs for limited CAPEX funds, wastewater treatment plants are increasingly looking to reduce their operating expenses. Many are now referring to themselves as water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs), reflecting a heightened focus on recovering nutrients, methane, and a host of other properties from their waste flows. The largest boon to date has come from thermal energy, but producing biogas comes with its own set of challenges, including accurate gas flow measurement.
Many utilities today are investing in advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). However, many of these same utilities often don’t realize the breadth of capabilities that a smart utility network (SUN) now offers. In the past, AMI networks were typically used for accurate metering and billing. Today, a smart utility network builds upon traditional AMI to provide multiple advantages across the full water cycle — and beyond.
Pharma and biotech need to easily pivot from analytical to process-scale purification of new biological drugs. When used with the NGC Chromatography System, Bio-Rad’s new NGC Fraction Collector offers researchers increased versatility and capacity needed for any application, from discovery to scale up.
Fill-finish syringe manufacturing is one of the last steps in pharmaceutical commercialization. The goal here is efficiency and sterility. Companies don’t want to waste any of their carefully developed product and they don’t want to distribute poor quality prefilled syringes or contaminated formulas. Once established, high syringe manufacturing standards must then be maintained throughout the drug’s life span, to deliver a reliable supply for patients.
The Aqua Caiman™ represents the next generation of articulating rake screen. In designing the screen, Parkson combined over 40 years of experience working on thousands of in-channel screen installations with in-depth market and engineering research. This allowed us to better understand the weaknesses of existing multi-rake and articulating rake screens. Our engineers put design expertise into components where strength matters the most — frame, bars and chain. They also provided a smart design to reduce manufacturing costs. The result is the most competitively priced articulating rake screen that provides unmatched durability, ease of operation and protection of downstream process equipment.
Automation of processes in the food and beverage production industry is continually increasing. Weighing and batching operations are critically important in this industry, as central production processes or as quality control measures.
Photron offers the FASTCAM Mini CX camera designed to deliver exceptional combination of resolution, frame rate, light sensitivity, and durability in a compact, standalone package for both on-board and off-board vehicle safety testing. The camera provides outstanding image quality with 1080 HD resolution at 1,000 frame per second and industry leading light sensitivity of ISO 5,000 color and ISO 10,000 monochrome.
Improved water reliability and lifecycle costs through total control of a one hundred mile transfer system.
Many invasive species are found along U.S. coasts, including fishes, crabs, mollusks, and marsh grasses. Since the general opinion is that invasives are harmful, land managers and communities spend a lot of time and resources attempting to remove them. Often this happens before much is known about their actual effects, either good or bad.
Climate change is unfolding right before our very eyes. And for Denver Water it is serious business. Experts in Colorado point to rising temperatures, earlier spring runoff and extreme fire behavior as powerful evidence for climate shifts resulting from the buildup of greenhouse gases tied to power generation, tailpipe emissions and a wide array of additional human activities over decades.
For those who are curious about the natural world or have concerns about environmental issues such as air pollution or water quality, there are more and more opportunities to collect and report data to the public or government agencies. Using new technologies, it is easier than ever to collect, analyze, and report environmental data.
This is the second of two articles looking at the increasing reliance of Australian cities on desalination plants to supply drinking water, with less emphasis on the alternatives of water recycling and demand management. So what is the best way forward to achieve urban water security?
Most people think as little as possible about the wastewater that is produced daily from their showers, bathtubs, sinks, dishwashers and toilets. But with the right techniques, it can become a valuable resource.
When it comes to food manufacturing, the pet food industry isn’t always in agreement on how to properly test and inspect pet food products. Here are tips to keep in mind as you begin to develop initiatives that drive operational excellence in pet food manufacturing.
Total nitrogen (TN) has become a compound of concern because of its impact on eutrophication on water sources. And as more states begin to set limits for TN, accurate testing becomes paramount. Unfortunately, multiple labs and variable test procedures can lead to disparities in final results. Many of today’s test methods are also time consuming, expensive, and even unsafe for lab technicians to use.
Material Discrimination X-ray (MDX) inspects all cartons of bone-in and boneless meats, on a single line, according to their unique specifications ensuring a safe product, maximized efficiency and product yield.
Economist Harold Pollack's New York Times article suggesting priorities for your philanthropic work was a fun read for those of us who would love to imagine what we would do with $131 billion. Unlike Pollack, I'm not going to tell you how to give away your money — you earned it, it's yours, and you can do what you want with it.
For any drinking water or wastewater treatment operation, pH neutralization is never far from top-of-mind. The regulatory standards for pH to which effluent must adhere, also known as “pH neutralization,” are central to ensuring that treatment is performed accurately and that the water or wastewater leaving a plant is safe.
Without an appropriate control strategy, even the best wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) equipment can struggle to deliver maximum efficiency. Because energy costs represent up to 60 percent of WWTP plant operating expense, air distribution designs and changing loading (biochemical/biological oxygen demand [BOD]/chemical oxygen demand [COD], ammonia) demands require control strategies designed to adapt to all eventualities efficiently. The following checklists, plus important Do’s and Don’ts, can help in identifying an underperforming control strategy and developing a better one.
Corrosion control has always been a priority for distributing safe drinking water throughout the world’s networks of pipeline. This has become all the more critical following the outrageous lead poisoning revelations in Flint, MI — an incident caused directly by corrosion of the city’s lead-based infrastructure.
You may have read recently that Orange County Water District (OCWD) and Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD) set a Guinness World Record for the most wastewater recycled to drinking water in 24 hours. The record attempt kicked off on February 15th 2018 to mark the 10th anniversary since the districts’ Groundwater Replenishment System was launched and culminated with more than 100 million gallons per day (MGD) being produced.
Saturday, March 24th was a busy day at the Brightwater Clean-Water Treatment Facility in Woodinville, WA, just outside Seattle. The Utility’s Education and Community Center was full of family-oriented science experiments and art projects with organized tours of the wastewater treatment plant taking place throughout the day. All in recognition of International World Water Day which had occurred two days before.
Fine-tuning for best performance at water treatment plants (WTPs) and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) requires versatile and accurate instrumentation to monitor and respond to changing conditions. Getting the most out of those meters, gauges, and analyzers requires knowledgeable operators. That is why instrumentation decisions should be made not only on feature-rich technologies and quality performance, but also on the documented support and training that will enable staff to maximize the value of the investment.
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.
