Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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A qualified service engineer will carry out routine maintenance – ensure connections are tight, air filters are dust free and replace any parts such as capacitors – thereby making sure that the energy saving figure you are expecting is actually achieved. They can also help fine-tune the application to ensure that you sweat the asset and get the optimum performance. This could be something as simple as switching on energy optimisation, also known as flux optimisation, which enhances the VSD's efficiency, squeezing out even more energy saving. The engineer will also keep you up to date with the latest technologies. For instance, for the first time, low voltage motors can be fitted with a smart sensor. The device remotely tracks the vibration, temperature and energy use of a motor. A traffic light system on a mobile device indicates the motor's status to the engineer: green = good, amber = service interval due, red = imminent failure. Alternatively, you can train your own in-house maintenance teams. ABB runs several courses, delivered either at your premises or an ABB site, that will keep maintenance teams fully on top of those vital installed pumping assets. Find out more about what ABB can offer at new.abb.com/uk. The Talk: opinion The Talk: opinion PAUL ECCLESTON, TECHNICAL DIRECTOR, JBA CONSULTING Whole catchment management Catchment work and natural solutions involve multiple stakeholders and a great deal of effort, but if done well, can also yield great benefits T he potential benefits of Working with Natural Processes (WwNP) to address the challenges of flooding, water resource scarcity and water quality, has generated momentum within government, regulators, the industry and in the wider public. Whole catchment solutions that work better with natural processes to mitigate different risks are becoming increasingly more important, not least because of their multiple benefits, typically associated with improved habitat, ecology and carbon storage. The recent WWT Sustainable Water conference demonstrated how the industry is innovating in this area. JBA are working to help overcome two of the big challenges identified at the conference. First, how at a catchment scale, do we identify locations which provide the best opportunities and benefits, and how confidently can we quantify the benefits? Second, how do we evaluate all of the multiple impacts of catchment interventions, rather than chase single outcome solutions? Whilst a massive industry has built up around detailed distributed modelling of urban drainage and sewer networks, wider catchment and rural modelling is only just starting to catch up. The technology is now there at the large scale (>1000km2) to model distributed changes associated with WwNP in detail (2m resolution), as demonstrated in the winning entry of the Defra Flood Modelling competition (Hankin et al., 2017). This included identifying where flood storage interventions might increase flood risk by synchronising flood peaks from individual tributaries. We are also getting better at identifying broad-scale potential areas for WwNP (see the new England-wide mapping just launched on wwnp.jbahosting.com). Having modelled diffuse pollution and flood risk at the broad-scale separately in a number of different studies, we were able to bring these together for United Utilities (UU) in a recent natural capital based approach for UU and Vivid economics. The process included an initial phase, involving reaching out to a range of catchment partners, sitting around maps of the Petteril catchment, and understanding what different WwNP measures were in place or might be practical. Following this, a range of asset management and whole catchment scenarios were modelled using first Farmscoper and SIMCAT. It should be no surprise that land use change was required before the equivalent of asset management solutions could be achieved in terms of reducing phosphorus concentrations. The distributed flood modelling of the same measures did not show huge benefits, but that is largely because the Petteril catchment is rural and does not have so many properties at risk. The benefits in terms of carbon sequestration, are comparatively much greater, so the message has to be that whole catchment management solutions need to be evaluated in a multiple benefit framework. To this end, we have developed a new 'front-end' tool called CatMan, that allows different metrics across flooding, water quality and carbon to be considered in a dashboard interface. Whilst the science and technology continue to evolve, the message to all catchment management stakeholders is clear – work together to develop joined-up schemes which deliver multiple benefits. 10 | NOVEMBER 2017 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk