Water & Wastewater Treatment

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION NEWS Mobile technology improves legionella response Windscreen wipers measure rainfall A significant investment in mobile technology is helping Integrated Water Technology's (IWS) clients respond more rapidly to critical data on water systems' temperature and legionella risk. The IFS system has been rolled out to field operatives in the form of Motorola ES400 personal digital assistants (PDA) on a Windows platform. The engineers can now feed data back to the company's business management immediately. Speaking at a press conference to launch business software company IFS's report Enterprise Mobility in the UK, IWS's managing director Pete Aspley said that mobile technology had produced a transformation in the way the contractor, part of Researchers in Germany are capturing windscreen wiper responses to rain to measure rainfall. The simple observation that in rainy weather drivers use their windscreen wipers faster in heavy rain and slower in light rain has inspired researchers from the University of Hanover to come up with RainCars, an initiative that aims to use GPS-equipped moving cars as devices to measure rainfall. Initially using a lab equipped with a rain simulator, the researchers monitored cars with different wiper systems in light to heavy 'rain'. The research is now being rolled out in the field with a taxi firm and a car company involved. Optical sensors that are installed in many modern cars to automate wipers were found to be a better measure than manual wipers. The sensors use a system of infrared laser beams that detect when drops of rain accumulate on the surface of the device. Each sensor reading corresponds to a specific amount of water, with more frequent readings corresponding to more intense rainfall. "The optical sensors measure the rain on the windshield in a more direct and continuous manner so, currently, they would be the better choice for rain sensors in cars," says project leader Uwe Haberlandt. "If moving cars could be used to measure rainfall, the network density could be improved dramatically." The most recent results of the project are now published in Hydrology & Earth System Sciences, an open-access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). South Staffordshire Water's nonregulated business, reported to its clients. He said that the system had got rid of "mountains of paperwork" and that the company could now "turnaround reports in hours, not days and weeks," giving it a clear advantage over its competitors. Aspley described how inspecting an asset portfolio of 1,000 sites for one local authority used to involve two contract managers sitting at a desk processing paper. Sometimes the client would see data two months retrospectively. "Now they go to their PC and see the 'exception report' of actual inspection data each day," he explained. Plant operative Trust Diya gets to grips with a PDA for logging water systems data Aspley says the investment will help IWS's clients respond with more agility. He believes the need to have accurate data in the water industry is only going to increase. Tropical seeds top chemical treatment, say researchers Seeds from the Moringa oleifera tree could be used to purify water in large water treatment plants in the UK, according to researchers led by Professor Adrian Rennie of the Department of Materials Physics at Uppsala University in Sweden. Earlier research, in 2010, described how very small amounts of protein from these seeds could bind strongly to surfaces and cause contaminant particles to aggregate. It was originally thought that the application could be used widely for cheap treatment in the developing world. Now the group, which includes researchers from Sweden's Lund University as well as Namibia, Botswana, France and the US, has discovered that seed material can deliver more efficient purification than conventional chemicals in use globally, such as aluminium sulphate. There is a broad interest in new, sustainable methods for water treatment and the research group believes the seeds have the potential for worldwide application, including the UK. The results of the study, published in the journal Colloids & Surfaces, show that the clusters of material (flocs) produced using the Moringa seed protein are much more tightly packed than those formed with conventional flocculating agents. The researchers say this is better for water purification as such flocs are more easily separated. They have also estimated the optimum amount of seed extract that should be used to minimise residues in treated water. Filtration media plant opens in Scotland A glass-recycling plant producing filtration media for the global water market has been opened near Edinburgh. The £5M Dryden Aqua plant in Bonnyrigg creates active filter media (AFM) for water filtration from old glass. The facility has the capacity to process a quarter of Scotland's recycled glass, including beer and wine bottles, while the active filter media (AFM) is already being used around the world to treat water for drinking, swimming pools and from industrial waste. Opening the site, the Scottish Government's Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead said, "This is a revolutionary system from Dryden Aqua which exemplifies the technological and environmental expertise that Scotland is famous for. This is a great example of upcycling where we create something of higher value than the original substance." 10 Water & Wastewater Treatment January 2014 Howard Dryden, chairman of Dryden Aqua, who is on Scotland's Hydro Nation panel, said, "Our product can eliminate up to 90% of the pollution load from industry and municipal wastewater sites and as regulations become more stringent we hope that more people will look to Scotland for the answer to their water challenges." • WWT visits the new plant, see page16 Optical sensors are installed in many modern cars to automate wipers wwtonline.co.uk

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