Water & Wastewater Treatment

www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | november 2014 | 11 Comment I t is not oen that as a conference delegate I have felt the need to eulogise about an event aerwards, but everything about the Environmental Water Management Conference, organ- ised by WWT and held on 24th September, fell firmly into this category. Speakers drawn from across the sector provided an expert take on the challenge of managing water to meet the future needs of people and the environment, and from my own perspective, a number of shared key themes emerged. One of the key messages reinforced at the conference was the need to adapt over the coming decades to the water management challenges that will be posed by a combination of population growth and climate-change impacts on weather patterns. Briefly, and as the weather patterns over recent years has tended to illustrate, in the future we can expect annual rainfall to remain at today's level, but for the pattern of rain to change, lead- ing to increased risks of future floods and droughts. Tackling these twin threats is likely to involve a wide range of agencies and the equally wide range of measures explained by front-line agencies at the conference; however, of paramount im- portance is the need to ensure that measures designed to prevent flooding do not exacerbate drought risks, and vice-versa. Poten- tial examples of this are river dredging to improve the efficiency of water courses as conduits to the sea, which at the same time perversely reduces the water retained for later water re-use. This inevitably means that all the water we need to meet future public, commercial and environmental needs must be controlled as closely as possible where it falls, to avoid downstream flood risks, and to allow it to be stored/attenuated for later re-use. In the rural landscape, where agriculture is particularly at future drought risk, this will probably involve encouraging farm- ers to restore the ponds and reservoirs on which their land once depended, reducing the downstream flood risk correspondingly whilst storing water for later re-use. In urban environments, the principles of "sustainable drain- age" (SuDS) are already well-understood, but to date the UK has struggled with the concept, widely deployed in comparable continental countries, of re-using water being attenuated by SuDS to avoid floods, in order to reduce drought risks. Finally, what emerged crystal clear from this excellent confer- ence was the pressing need for all aspects of water management to come under coherent and integrated management. Dividing up responsibilities for demand management, inland flood avoidance, and drought avoidance, then splitting them between Government departments and agencies is not an obvious recipe for success. Alongside this, predicted climate change and population growth impacts are likely to present strategic-scale challenges that cannot be met by short-term responses; the first benefit of an integrated approach would therefore be production of a compre- hensive long-term national water management strategy to which all the agencies present at the conference could reference their own work. Terry Nash is founder member, and the current executive director, of the UK rainwater Harvesting Association The twin threats of drought and flood Terry Nash execUTive direcTor, UK rAinWATer HArvesTing AssociATion rich MaTThews generAl mAnAger, silTbUsTer Process solUTions W ith a focus on TOTEX for the next AMP cycle, now is a genuine opportunity for the water industry to think more innovatively about how it meets its immediate and long-term needs. However, innovation doesn't have to simply mean new tech- nologies and processes. Indeed bolder innovation can involve simply thinking about things differently and thus using familiar technologies in smarter, more strategic ways. For instance, the emphasis on TOTEX gives water companies a real opportunity to recalibrate the CAPEX and OPEX balance. Companies that are prepared to do this - by using packaged, modular, plug-and-play technology more widely - will find a range of solutions and some major benefits open up to them. Take water companies who are looking to create extra treat- ment capacity or boost site resilience; one option is to integrate a modular plant into an existing process stream. If risk minimisa- tion is the priority, modular plant is a good way for companies to minimise the downtime for an existing process, or have back up by running a parallel process stream. Such a modular approach offers major benefits which will resonate in the climate of AMP6. It enables companies to get more out of existing assets – more treatment for reduced costs. It ena- bles off-site fabrication and manufacture, thus reducing on-site risks and reduced site carbon emissions. A 'bolt on' approach also requires less design input due to off-the-shelf solutions which are oen above ground structures. This can result in reduced ground- works and eliminating risk within the project. Such modular technology has a small footprint, enabling more to be done with existing land assets, and its rapid, easy deployment means works can be expanded as and when required to maintain compliance - rather than lots of spare, costly capacity having to be built in for future needs. Despite such massive benefits, many in the water industry may be cautious about doing things differently; they understandably worry about their brand reputations and shareholders. However, other industries with multi-million pound brands and sharehold- ers to worry about have widely accepted this modular approach. Indeed companies such as Heinz, Nestlé & Premier Foods use Siltbuster Process Solutions' mobile lamella Dissolved Air Flota- tion (DAF) and lamella clarifier units as permanent plant, or in other innovative ways to boost capacity, to provide support during periods of shut down, or to provide greater process resilience. For instance, First Milk used the DAF technology to provide a temporary treatment solution whilst its existing treatment system was decommissioned. A DAF was installed with a minimal lead time, and fitted around existing infrastructure. Various DAF units have also been installed by Scottish Distilleries across a number of sites as permanent solutions, integrated into existing process streams to provide additional treatment capacity. TOTEX is a golden opportunity for water companies to follow the highly successful players in other high profile industries; to free up their thinking and use modular systems in many other, strategic, long- term ways. rich Matthews is general manager at siltbuster Process solutions A modular approach for AMP6?

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