LIVERMORE, CA -- In late 2004, Sandia National Laboratories announced a multiyear research agreement with Tenix Investments Pty. Ltd., a partnership that offered the vision of a safer future for the nation’s water supplies. The collaboration aspired to develop a method for constantly monitoring water for biological pathogens including biotoxins, bacteria, viruses, and protozoa. Now, just two-and-a-half years into the project, Sandia researchers have a working device in place and have demonstrated that the initial dream is, indeed, now a reality.

Sandia’s unattended water sensor (UWS) has successfully undergone testing at a large Bay Area water utility for more than a year and, just recently, has been deployed to a municipal water station in Arizona for additional observation and adjustments. Staff will perform periodic maintenance and troubleshooting on the system, which is expected to further demonstrate the viability of unattended water monitoring.

“The initial research and development was focused on defining the system, identifying its core capability, and developing a concrete tool that does what we wanted it to do,” said Chris Macintosh, Tenix Investment’s engineering manager. “Having now met those objectives and proven the capability of the technology, the next phase of the design will be to take this knowledge and develop a product suitable for use by the water industry.” Macintosh said that other applications for the UWS include monitoring of agricultural water for contaminants, as well as water provided to sports stadiums and other venues.

Field-deployable detection technologies in the nation’s water supplies have become a high priority in recent years. “Biological monitoring devices are essential to assess the type and extent of contamination in a suspected water security event,” according to an upcoming report by the National Research Council’s Water Science and Technology Board. “A broader range of innovative and developing detection technologies for biological agents, including methods that are field deployable...should be considered and evaluated,” the report asserts.

Sandia’s UWS (measuring 17 inches high by 14 inches wide by 7 inches deep) is a box composed of analytic instruments, pumps, tubes, and small reservoirs to handle minute amounts of fluid. The reservoirs, playfully referred to by Sandia researchers as the “juice bar,” contain chemical buffers, fluorescent dyes, proteins, and separation gel. This innovative diagnostic instrumentation package, based on Sandia’s well-known MicroChemLab technology, is mounted near the water supply. The box is connected to a small, submerged probe that transports the sample into the system.

Largely due to the automated sample preparation that is the hallmark of the device, the UWS is currently able to achieve sample analysis in just 12 minutes — a marked improvement over the original goal of 30 minutes or less.

According to Brent Haroldsen, who serves as Sandia’s lead engineer on the project, the UWS is currently able to detect protein toxins such as SEB, botulinum, and ricin. Haroldsen said the next phase of the Sandia activities will be to expand the device’s detection capability to include bacteria such as E. coli and protozoa such as Cryptosporidium.

“To detect those kinds of pathogens, we will incorporate more advanced sample preparation techniques, which we have already developed for other projects,” said Haroldsen. “This requires us to solubilize, or “break up” the cell into individual proteins. Detecting organisms also requires improved signature recognition capability to accommodate their natural variation.”

Sandia researchers, said Haroldsen, need to configure a working database of organism signatures to allow them to accurately distinguish the signatures from one another. He and his Sandia colleagues are looking at algorithm approaches that will help define the level of specificity the UWS will be able to achieve. One such method, for example, is the Bayesian approach (Bayesian analysis, according to the International Society for Bayesian Analysis, is a well-known approach to data analysis that casts statistical problems in the framework of decision making). Haroldsen says that the technology used in the UWS could clearly discriminate between types of organisms such as bacteria or viruses, “as long as we appropriately account for their natural variability.”

Victoria VanderNoot, an analytical chemist at Sandia who serves as the UWS project’s lead scientist, also noted the cost-savings advantages that come with using proteins to differentiate between organisms. “It gets us away from having to use expensive primers or antibodies, which are needed with other techniques like polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or immunoassay,” she points out.

Haroldsen says that ensuring the reliability of the components used to develop this prototype — which are small and intricate — is a challenge that he and his colleagues have embraced with gusto. Sandia invented many of the components, such as a suite of microfluidic fittings, manifolds, and interconnects, because no commercial products were available to reproducibly handle slight amounts of fluids.

The UWS is expected to operate for at least three months in Arizona. Sandia and its partners would then like to bring the system to an Environmental Protection Agency facility or the U.S. Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, where it can be tested in a real-world environment that includes analysis on bona fide toxic agents situated in authentic water supply conditions. Currently, analysis is conducted in both situations individually (i.e., in a laboratory setting at Sandia or in water supply facilities in Arizona or the Bay Area), but not simultaneously.

Source: http://www.sandia.gov/

Shaw Invests in Blue Water Technologies

Baton Rouge, LA -- The Shaw Group Inc. today announced that it has made an equity investment in Blue Water Technologies, Inc., a privately held company based in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho.

Blue Water’s core business is new water treatment technology, the tertiary treatment of industrial and municipal wastewater to reduce phosphorus and other contaminants to extremely low levels.

The company utilizes a proprietary process developed at the University of Idaho which is licensed exclusively to Blue Water. Extensive testing through pilot studies and full-scale deployment have consistently yielded 99%+ removal rates and have been accomplished with dramatically lower capital costs than other traditional methods.

Blue Water is an emerging leader in the wastewater treatment sector offering sustainable, environmentally friendly processes. In addition to the equity investment, the two companies agreed to collaborate on future engineering, design and construction projects. Additionally, this alliance between Shaw and Blue Water will offer entire plant retrofits for the municipal and industrial wastewater treatment markets.

“We are not only making an investment in Blue Water, but we also intend to align a variety of other Shaw technologies to create distinct technological and competitive advantages in the marketplace,” said Ron Oakley, President of Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure (“Shaw E&I”). “This investment brings in a key piece of the water management platform Shaw E&I is actively developing.”

The Shaw Group Inc. is a leading global provider of engineering, procurement, construction, technology, maintenance, fabrication, manufacturing, consulting, remediation, and facilities management services for government and private sector clients in the energy, chemical, environmental, infrastructure, and emergency response markets.

For further information, visit:
http://www.shawgrp.com/
and
http://www.blueh2o.net/

. In-Situ Releases Two New Water Level Meters In-Situ Inc. announces the release of the new Level Tape 100 and 200 water level meters for measuring in wells or bore holes.

CSU Professor Evaluates Stormwater Management
CSU has been awarded a contract to develop planning tools to protect urban waterways from pollution due to stormwater runoff.
 

New System Converts Sludge to Fertilizer New technology removes phosphorus and other nutrients from wastewater and recycles them into commercial fertilizer.

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Ms. Holt needs help with settling in gravity thickener:

Our local water treatment plant once used alum in their process which helped us at the WWTP when the solids were thickening in the gravity thickeners.  Then they switched to ferric which didn't really impact us a lot until they added TracVac to their basins.

Before the TracVacs they would drop a basin once a week and use fire hoses to wash all of their solids to the drain which brought them straight to us.  No problem, once a week we got a ton of solids that had been sitting for weeks.

Now with the TracVacs we get the solids from them continually thru the day everyday.  Now we have a problem. We are getting the same amount of solids we were getting before only more often.  However, now they aren't old solids, but fresh.  We have a hard time thickening them and a harder time dewatering them.

Some speculation from a senior plant operator is that the fresh ferric as opposed to the ferric that sat in basins for weeks is where our problem lies.  I have no idea.

Does anyone know how ferric reacts when it is fresh as opposed to old? (Click here to post a reply)

Thanks for any help or suggestions,
Kim Holt
WSACC
kdholt@ctc.net

Mr. Rowlett wants to know more about re-aeration:

Hello to all, could someone help me to understand the purpose and benefits of a re-aeration basin. I work at a 24 MGD plant that has a re-aeration basin prior to an extended aeration basin.  (Click here to post a reply)

Thanks,
Cameo Rowlett
malcolm.parker.jr@verizon.net

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Project Manager - Kansas, MO

Severn Trent Services is looking for a Project Manager. Candidates should be experienced with large high strength wastewater flow streams & wastewater systems that process food related waste products.

Exp with mechanical dewatering, aeration, odor control, process chemicals and process energy management is preferred. B.S. in Chemistry, Biology, Mechanical, Chemical or related field.

Contact:
Tonee Black
Severn Trent Services
Telephone: 800-460-6565 ext 274
Email: tblack@stes.com
Web: http://www.severntrentservices.com/

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Small-Scale Cogeneration Handbook
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Wastewater Microbiology for Operators
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