Every city facing infrastructure or operational challenges or concerns about maintaining quality of life in the face of population growth or a changing environment has benefits to gain from a unified smart-city approach. Here are some concepts for promoting understanding and acceptance among utility and government decision-makers, plus several examples of benefits already being garnered by smart cities large and small.
Water quite literally flows through every facet of life, being the key element for everyone and everything on Earth. The world’s population is increasing at 1.1 percent (roughly 83 million) every year, an incredible and alarming rate straining the world’s fresh water supply. The increasing pressures between what humanity demands and what is currently available emphasizes the importance of conservation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Over the last several years the wastewater reuse segment of the water industry has experienced both rapid growth and tremendous change. Global demand for increased water supplies fuels the development of alternative water sources, including reclaimed wastewater.
Title 22 of California’s Water Recycling Criteria is among the strictest water treatment standards for water recycling and reuse in the United States. Fluence’s MABR demonstration plant was installed at the Codiga Resource Recovery Center (CR2C) in Stanford, California, in January 2018 for the purpose of third-party evaluation. The testing parameters included criteria to evaluate reliable enhanced nutrient removal in the form of Total Nitrogen, which is increasingly important across the United States and difficult and costly to achieve through conventional wastewater treatment.
In September of 2016, Ted Henifin took the first sip of water purified at a pilot treatment plant developed by HRSD (Hampton Roads Sanitation District). Now, the innovative water treatment program known as SWIFT — Sustainable Water Initiative for Tomorrow — is changing the lens through which communities and government officials view wastewater, drinking water, aquifer replenishment, and even fighting sea level rise.
The OPTISONIC 7300 is a universal 2-path ultrasonic gas flowmeter for process and utility gas measurements in oil and gas refineries or the chemical or petrochemical industries. It is also suitable for non-custody transfer natural gas applications or applications with (compressed) air, mixed or flue gases (up to +180°C / +356°F). Using the transit time differential measuring principle, the OPTISONIC 7300 delivers high performance over a wide flow range (up to DN600 / 24", turndown ratio: 100:1). Its patented titanium transducers are perfectly focused, equalizing process fluctuations and avoiding acoustic feedback.
Multiwave 7000 combines the well-known concept of Anton Paar’s HPA-S with modern, well-engineered microwave technology, representing a new level of microwave digestion. With the novel pressurized digestion cavity (PDC) temperatures up to 300 °C and pressures up to 199 bar can be achieved. This ensures complete digestions of all kinds of samples such as food, environmental, polymer, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, geological, chemical, and petrochemical samples. Outstanding features save valuable time and reduce running costs. Budget-friendly, different sizes of vials with plug-on caps and racks of up to 24 positions are available. Integrated water cooling minimizes the cooling times and maximizes the sample throughput.
One for all - Endress+Hauser's multivariable metering. The ability to measure several process variables all at the same time opens up completely new application fields.
Packaging your trial
We understand that labeling and packaging your trial drug is an intricate and vital piece of your project. While the clinical supplies packaging industry has changed substantially over time, we make sure our experts keep up-to-date and understand how these changes affect your packaging needs.
Early leak detection is vital for distribution systems, with the ability to identify system failure points before they impact customer service levels. When water resources are limited, early leak detection is a valuable tool in reducing non-revenue water and extending pipe asset life. The EchoShore®-DX platform is a fixed leak detection technology that is changing the way water main leaks are identified and repaired.
Improved water reliability and lifecycle costs through total control of a one hundred mile transfer system.
The OPTIFLUX 2100 is an electromagnetic flowmeter (EMF) for standard water and wastewater applications. It is the ideal solution for all general flow applications where reliable flow measurement with sufficient yet not extremely high accuracy is required. Installation in measurement chambers subject to (constant) flooding is possible with the remote IP68 / NEMA 6P rated version.
Oily water filtration was developed for filtering free oil and suspended solids from produced water or refinery wastewater, to be disposed of, re-injected, discharged or reused. These systems primarily used black walnut shell media, and required expensive treatment upstream to limit the filter loading rate.
Behind all of Schreiber’s patented methods for biological wastewater treatment, our process controls provide users with the ability to run their operations. FlexControl monitors and controls the chemistry used by your biological reactor throughout all three phases of wastewater treatment: oxic, anoxic and anaerobic. Its flexible design allows you to adapt quickly to changing conditions like seasonal capacity demands, increases in municipal population, permit modifications and much more—without the expense of reprogramming your system or purchasing new equipment.
The Aclara sewer monitoring solution leverages our industry-leading RF network to provide near real-time monitoring of manholes and other key sewer locations. Whether used for early warning of overflows, informing maintenance schedules, compliance reporting, or deeper analytics (such as capacity modeling and performance reporting) the sewer monitoring solution is easy to install, reliable, low-maintenance, and integrated into your AMI environment.
Natoli Quick-Release Tablet Tooling allows researchers to test different dwell times during the tablet R&D process without the expense of buying several different sets of tools or the time needed to change complete sets of tooling or turret speed.
Flow Sciences, a leading provider of containment solutions for laboratory, pilot plant, and manufacturing facilities consults with third party industrial hygienists to conduct in-house Factory Acceptance Tests (FATs) and Site Acceptance Tests (SATs) to ensure customers’ products perform at the level they need.
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.
The technology is ready, but is the world ready? The seismic shift toward water reuse will occur only as driving circumstances reach their tipping point.
Everyone is familiar with the water cut statistics: three to seven barrels of produced water emerge from the ground per barrel of oil. This oft-cited statistic is useful to appreciate the scale of the volumes of water produced in the Permian Basin. However, it does not tell the whole story.
Water is essential to life. And it is a very precious commodity in Israel, home to 9 million people living in a rocky desert that receives about 10 inches of rain a year. By comparison, Denver, considered semi-arid, gets about 15 inches of rain a year, which is about a fourth of the precipitation a tropical city such as Miami receives.
Collaborative research is a critical element for identifying unforeseen risks associated with using the oil industry’s wastewater outside the oilfield. That’s the recommendation of a new peer-reviewed paper accepted this week in the Journal of Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (IEAM).
Municipalities are under increasing pressure to identify new water sources and at some point in the near future many will be forced to take a hard look at reuse. While solutions available for reuse projects are reliable, the trick is properly combining them properly and ensuring operators who are unfamiliar with the technology can become proficient. For water utilities, this means having a trusted partner to enable the solutions. In this Water Talk interview, Patrick Regan, vice president of global corporate accounts with Evoqua, discusses the factors that will drive water reuse as well as approaches to address emerging contaminants.
With ever-growing demand for water resources, the reuse discussion has been building for years. More utilities are considering it, policy is being created around it, and new technologies are making it more efficient. To better understand the evolving landscape, Water Talk sat down with Brown and Caldwell's regional One Water leader, Allegra da Silva.
Partnering with the Water Research Foundation, Brown and Caldwell has developed the Blueprint for One Water — a user-friendly document for the practical application of 'One Water' planning. According to Lisa Skutecki, Brown and Caldwell's Southern California Water Resources Group Manager, 'One Water' is the concept of breaking down barriers across the water sector.
As water reuse becomes increasingly common, more utilities will get to know ozone. To explain its role in water treatment schemes, Water Talk welcomed Jim Lauria, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Mazzei Injector Company, and Ben Kuhnel, Senior Project Manager for Arcadis. Learn how ozone works in concert with other processes to safely recycle water and treat contaminants of emerging concern — even in mobile/on-site applications.
