Water and Effluent Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/997463
16 WET NEWS JULY 2018 | wwtonline.co.uk Upsizing sewer storage A s many sewer networks around the world strug- gle to cope in the face of extreme rainfall events, the need for new solutions is be- coming increasingly urgent, with traditional means of ex- panding storage capacity not only costly but also space-inten- sive. CENTAUR promises to help provide answers. The system, named Most Innovative New Technology of the Year at the 2018 Water Industry Awards, boosts capacity within the sewer network through 'virtual stor- age', using a gate to control the flow. "The objective is to utilise the storage capacity that already exists within a wastewater net- work," Environmental Monitor- ing Solutions Ltd. (EMS) A gate installed as part of the CENTAUR system A diagram of how CENTAUR works to holds back stormwater • The Water Industry Award-winning CENTAUR offers 'virtual storage' within sewer networks to cut flood risk and reduce CSO spills By Robin Hackett business development director Dr Kieran Williams says. "We're trying to be much smarter in the way we use the existing infrastructure." EMS is one of seven project partners on CENTAUR, along with the University of Sheffield, University of Coimbra, EAWAG (the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technol- ogy), Águas de Coimbra, Veolia and gate manufacturer Stein- hardt GmbH. Described as an intelligent autonomous system for local flood risk reduction, the CEN- TAUR system was developed under a €3.5 million EU Research and Innovation grant for Horizon 2020. It involves the installation of transducers at key points within the sewer network to monitor INSIGHT CSOS AND DRAINAGE water levels and communicate that information to modules, which are placed on lampposts or in manholes, over a proprie- tary radio protocol. The mod- ules then communicate with a central hub, which uses Fuzzy Logic-based artificial intelli- gence (AI) to control when and to what extent a gate installed within the network should allow water to pass through. "As the level increases at the area you're trying to protect, the gate will modulate further upstream to start utilising the storage available further up the network," Dr Williams says. The system relies on the pro- prietary radio protocol for com- munications because, Dr Wil- liams says, GSM – the mobile phone network – is "just not reliable enough for the