Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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In the know The inventors of a wastewater meter are expecting their product to make a transformative impact in the industry aer it won intellectual property protection. Dynamic Flow Technolo- gies of Loughborough has invented a smart meter which has now won intellectual property protection with the help of Midlands patent at- torneys Swindell & Pearson. The company has spent seven years and has invested £1.4M in developing the meter, with the help of government and EU grants, shareholder back- ing and partnerships with Wessex Water and manufac- turer Elster. The concept for the wastewater meter, which is aimed at businesses and industrial water users, took shape in 2009 when inventors Martin Cro and Duncan Wallace were approached by entrepreneur Nic Breese and Phil Wood, a former director of Severn Trent Utility Services, with the idea. Water company bills cover RESEARCH ROUND UP Wastewater meter set for market a er winning IP protection both the supply of clean water and the treatment of used water, but the latter element is based on an estimate and does not reflect the real volume of wastewater a business produces. Dynamic Flow's meter measures the amount of effluent to provide an accurate reading, which if they are able to minimise waste could save some individual companies thousands of pounds per year. "The potential of industries, particularly those that use a lot of water such as brewing, food processing, textile manufacturing and sports centres and councils which use water for landscaping is limitless, and there are possible major annual cost savings aer the initial installation," said Martin Cro, Managing Director of Dynamic Flow Technologies. A commercial launderette which had used the meter on a trial basis had been able to save £600 per month, he added. The device is a small RISING UP Severn Trent has appointed Jane Simpson as its new Head of Asset Creation. Simpson joins the company from Network Rail, where she was Chief Engineer for two-and-a-half years, also acting as chair of the Industry Standards Coordination Committee as well as being a member of the Industry Technology Strategic Leadership Group. Business Stream has appointed Derek Hendry as director of strategy and corporate services. Hendry has joined the company from Standard Life, where his most recent role was leading change and transformation programmes on international assignments in Canada, China and Hong Kong. Based in Business Stream's Edinburgh head office, and reporting into chief executive Johanna Dow, Hendry will be responsible for around 30 staff and an operational budget of £4M across technology, people management, business strategy and transformational change. Future Water Association has announced the appointment of Virginie Vinel to its board. Vinel is Co-founder and Marketing Director of Agily, the award-winning team goal management app, which was highly commended in Future Water Association's Water Innovation Dragons competition held at Utility Week Live in May 2016. John Hollins, Engineering Manager of SPP Pumps, has been unveiled as the British Pump Manufacturers' Association (BPMA)'s new Technical Committee Chairman. He replaces John Bower of Flowserve, who recently retired a er holding the position for 10 years. box that uses low-energy microwaves to measure the effluent. This is housed in a terracotta-coloured box that is fitted to pipes either as a building is being constructed or aerwards. It is already fitted to some buildings at Loughborough University, where the company is based at the Advanced Technology Innovation Centre. All parts for the invention are made in this country, with the base unit made in Leicester by Valley CPI. Derby-based Swindell & Pearson first lodged a patent application in 2010. Patents were granted in the UK in 2014 and the USA this year. A European patent is pending. ● 26 Innovation Zone: Sludge ● 29 Getting to Grips: Harmonic distortion ● 33 The Tank File: WWT's guide to tanks ● 39 Products: Monitoring and metering 13 Sep Utility Week HR Forum, Birmingham 14 Sep WWT Integrated Water Resource Management Conference, Birmingham 27 Sep WWT Drinking Water Conference, B'ham 28 Sep Global Leakage Summit, London COmING UP Scientists from the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) have developed smart bricks that are capable of recycling wastewater and generating electricity from sunlight. The bricks will be able to fit together and create 'bioreactor walls' that could then be incorporated in housing, public building and office spaces. The UWE Bristol team is working on the smart technologies that will be integrated into the bricks in this pan-European 'Living Architecture' (LIAR) project led by Newcastle University. The LIAR project brings together living architecture, computing and engineering to find a new way to tackle global sustainability issues. The smart living bricks will be made from bio-reactors filled with microbial cells and algae. Designed to self-adapt to changing environmental conditions the smart bricks will monitor and modify air in the building and recognise occupants. Each brick will contain Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) containing a variety of micro-organisms specifically chosen to clean water, reclaim phosphate, generate electricity and facilitate the production of new detergents, as part of the same process. The €3.2M LIAR project is co-ordinated by Newcastle University working with experts from the universities of the West of England (UWE Bristol), Trento and Florence, the Spanish National Research Council; LIQUIFER Systems Group and EXPLORA. It has received funding from the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Smart brick' can recycle wastewater www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | SEPTEMBER 2016 | 25