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Turning Rivers of Sludge into Revenue Streams
 Wellington,
New Zealand -- Viclink, the commercialization partner of
Victoria University of Wellington, has announced an exciting
clean technology project called Wetox. Wetox is an
innovation that uses science to address one of today’s
biggest pollution problems; it has the potential to keep New
Zealand’s rivers and waterways clean by treating the run-off
from our dairy farms, wineries and meat works.
The patented technology works by
breaking down smelly, liquid organic sludge, turning it into
usable by-products such as water, steam, fertilizer and
acetic acid, which may be used to generate additional
revenue streams.
John Errington, Chief Executive
Officer at Viclink said: “Traditional wet air oxidation
methods have been prohibitively expensive for smaller to
medium sized users. The invention of Wetox will bring this
technology to industries in a much more cost-effective way.
“The creation of Wetox is an
example of how Viclink works with academics and business to
solve real problems, such as cleaning-up New Zealand’s
waterways, and creating revenue for New Zealand from the
export of this ground breaking technology.”
Wetox uses a vat or autoclave
that is fed organic liquid waste made up of 4% to 15%
solids. Through a patented process, the formerly problematic
waste in the vat is turned into water, steam, acetic acid,
nitrates and phosphates that can either be used by the
business or sold on. The high-pressure steam that is
generated in the process can be used to drive a turbine for
power generation or the heat generated can be used for
industrial process heating.
Taylor Preston, a Wellington meat
processing company, has been providing samples for Wetox lab
testing. Simon Gatenby, Chief Executive Officer of Taylor
Preston said: “Wetox provides an increased level in
environmental sustainability for manufacturing businesses
that produce organic waste as part of their processes. We
are excited to be involved in the development of Wetox with
Viclink and are looking forward to being able to gain
benefit from a part of the waste stream that was previously
a problem.”
Sophie Howard, Viclink’s Manager,
Commercialization, managed the development of Wetox from a
thesis to a business. “We believe that even though the
business is in the beginning stages, it shows international
promise. There is huge potential for Wetox given that the
clean-tech industry is experiencing exponential growth and
managing waste in a sustainable manner has become a global
problem.
“The European market has been
identified as one where Wetox could have a huge impact due
to the existing strict legislation surrounding the treatment
and disposal of wastewater.”
Viclink identified the commercial
potential of Wetox from a PhD thesis at Victoria University
and began the process to commercialize the intellectual
property. This included applying for patents, securing
initial funding, researching market opportunities, testing
the technology, hiring a management team and appointing a
governance board.
The Foundation for Research
Science and Technology (FRST) provided assistance to Viclink
to help understand what the technology could do for the
market. Viclink used the Global Expert Search, a FRST
database of experts, to contact specialists in liquid waste
for advice and feedback.
Source:
http://www.vic-link.co.nz/ |
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Smith & Loveless Helps Flood
Victims
 Lenexa,
KS -- The Smith & Loveless Response Team was on-site and
on-call to help victims of the floods caused by the rise of
the Cumberland River and other bodies of water in the
Southeast on May 1 and 2, 2010.
Extensive damage not only ruined
homes and property, but it severely affected infrastructure
relied upon daily by thousands of people to convey potable
and used water (wastewater).
As a manufacturer of pumping
equipment critical to this infrastructure grid and with
numerous installations in the region, Smith & Loveless
resolved to assist as many cities as possible in the two
weeks following the flood. By May 3, Smith & Loveless
personnel were already on-site in Tennessee and Kentucky to
assess pump stations and to assist municipal customers with
their insurance company and disaster personnel from FEMA.
Retrofit Manager Tim Paulsen, who
traveled to Columbia, KY, a day after the flooding ceased,
described how one particular shallow creek in Kentucky — one
that a person could essentially walk across — rose
approximately 30 feet and took out a levee.
“They were more or less in shock
that this creek could rise so high, so quickly,” Paulsen
said. “But they were happy that we got there quickly to
assist them.”
A week later, Smith & Loveless
dispatched additional personnel with a truckload of parts to
assist one of the more devastated areas in Central
Tennessee. These technicians addressed numerous S&L pump
stations and ensured all were online before they left the
region. The objective on-site was to get them running on
automatic until long-term decisions could be made. Field
service technicians worked on setting up basic control
systems to allow wastewater to be pumped from homes once
potable water systems were back online.
Back at the home office in
Lenexa, KS, the Smith & Loveless Response Team contacted
hundreds of other municipalities to provide guidance on how
to get their equipment back up and running and to see what
other assistance the team could provide. For two weeks, they
remained consistently busy answering the phones, researching
installation records, and providing information to customers
in the affected areas by whatever means possible. The hard
work did not go unnoticed.
“The ruination was worse than
[Hurricane] Katrina. Not as consistent throughout like
Katrina, but in spots, the damage was as bad as I’ve seen,”
said Jim Corder, an S&L field service technician.
“People (affected by the flood)
were very appreciative that we got the (equipment) back up.
They were bringing us refreshments, allowing us to use their
hose for cleaning and thanking us.”
Source:
http://www.smithandloveless.com/ |
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WWTP's may emit more N2O than previously thought
 New
York, NY - Nitrous oxide, or N2O, is a greenhouse gas
considered by experts to be 300 times more powerful in its
atmospheric warming effect than carbon dioxide. By far the
greatest recorded sources of N2O emissions are from
agricultural activities and fossil fuel combustion. But
sewage breakdown by some wastewater treatment plants also
emit nitrous oxide.
Until recently nitrous oxide
emissions from plants using microbes to breakdown toxins was
estimated to be rather low. But the first large-scale survey
of 12 plants across the U.S., led by Columbia scientists,
shows that these waste water treatment may contribute a
larger share of emissions than previously thought; it also
challenges the current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
approach for assessing N2O emissions from such plants. The
findings appear in the recent issue of Environmental Science
& Technology.
The study’s principal
investigator, Kartik Chandran, assistant professor at the Fu
Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science,
explains that nitrous oxide emissions to date have only been
estimated because there has not been a consistent protocol
to measure N2O from using biological nitrogen removal
(BNR)—a process that uses microbes that involves bacteria to
breakdown waster. To solve this problem, the Columbia team
devised the first protocol to measure these emissions from
full-scale water purification facilities.
This protocol has been reviewed
by the EPA and adopted by plants across the nation and in
certain countries in Europe. Using this protocol, emissions
of N2O can be measured in real-time during different phases
of treatment within a single plant. To conduct this study,
the Columbia team took measurements of N2O 24 hours a day
for several weeks over a two year period around the nation
to gain an understanding of spatial and temporal variability
in N2O emissions.
Chandran studies the role of
microorganisms in both natural and engineered systems. His
research has shown that bacteria involved in breaking down
human waste are to blame for the emission of both nitrous
oxide and nitric oxide (NO), which causes atmospheric smog.
Human waste contains proteins that are eventually converted
to ammonia-nitrogen.
When left untreated, ammonia
flows into surrounding water bodies and can lead to marine
life sickness and death. To prevent nitrogen-related
impairment of water quality, biological wastewater treatment
plants transform the ammonia and organic nitrogen compounds
into nitrogen gas, which makes up about 79 percent of the
earth’s atmosphere and is benign.
The two-phase process of
biological nitrogen removal (BNR) in wastewater treatment
plants involves nitrifying bacteria that oxidize ammonia to
create nitrate (aerobic phase) while denitrifying bacteria
reduce nitrate, turning it into nitrogen gas, which is then
released to the atmosphere (anoxic phase).
A more accurate inventory of
nitrogen emissions from wastewater treatment plants can
affect policies regarding nitrous oxide and nitric oxide
emissions, harmful greenhouse gases. Prior to Chandran’s
study, it was not known how much N2O is emitted from plants
using a BNR process, although via preliminary calculations,
BNR had been implicated as a potentially dominant source.
The EPA currently estimates that approximately 88 plants in
the U.S. utilize this process.
As a result of the survey using
the new protocol, the team found that aerobic zones
generally contribute more to nitrous oxide fluxes. This is
important because the EPA approximation method assumes that
N2O is only emitted from anoxic zones by the process of
denitrification.
“Based on our actual
measurements, aerobic zones contribute far more N2O than
anoxic zones. This is one reason why the EPA emissions
estimates are potentially underestimates, since they
completely ignore aerobic zone emissions,” said Chandran.
The EPA has estimated that waste
water treatment plants contribute just 1.6 percent to the
total global emissions of N2O; however, the researchers
found that measured emission factors from some BNR processes
were at least one to two orders of magnitude higher than
current estimates and were uniformly highly spatially and
temporally variable. High ammonia and nitrite
concentrations, especially in the presence of high amounts
of dissolved oxygen, were implicated as triggers for
biogenic (process produced by living organisms) in N2O
generation.
The team hopes their findings
will lead to the design and operation of both new and old
BNR reactors in a manner that they convert the ammonium and
nitrite to nitrogen gas rather than N2O. As water quality
mandates become more stringent, numerous wastewater
treatment plants will be required to shift from non-BNR to
BNR, to remove nitrogen.
“Until our study, everyone was
following the EPA estimation method to approximate
emissions,” he said. “It might very well be that wastewater
treatment plants, particularly those that are not performing
optimally, are a far worse contributor to global warming
than we expected.”
Knowing triggers for increased
N2O emissions, however, explains Chandran, will make it
possible to design and operate BNR plants that not only meet
water quality regulations, but also minimize N2O.
Source:
http://www.columbia.edu/
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Veolia to supply Water Plant
for Indonesian Facility
 Saint
Maurice, France -- Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies
(VWS), global leader in water treatment, is a design &
build company and a specialized provider of first-class
turn key solutions (process water and waste water) to
meet the needs of their pharmaceutical, biotech and
healthcare clients.
Veolia Water Solutions &
Technologies will design and commission a process and
high purity water treatment installation at 250m3/d to
supply all process water needs for a new cosmetic
manufacturing site in Indonesia.
The plant consists of two key
treatments, an ion exchange softening plant and the VWS
Orion™ packaged reverse osmosis system. The choice of
VWS expertise and technologies offers the client a safe
and reliable solution to handle this complicated and
large high purity design and build project.
The client, one of the
largest cosmetic, perfumes and beauty companies in the
world, has awarded Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies
(VWS) a contract to supply a high-end standard water
plant for one of its South East Asian facilities.
The pre-treatment
installation is designed to supply softened water from
the site raw water supply for the downstream
manufacturing processes. The low hardness level (calcium
ions and magnesium ions <1ppm) will enhance cleaning
phases, avoid equipments scaling and feed the process
water plant.
Orion, is a compact
standardized water generation system designed to meet
the cosmetic, pharmaceutical and biotech market needs.
The Orion has an enhanced
reverse osmosis module which gives improved recovery of
up to 90% for single pass systems and 75% for twin pass.
This means lower operating costs and a reduced carbon
and water footprints. The Orion supplied is a twin-pass
reverse osmosis to produce deionized water <10µS/cm and
is fully hot water sanitizable (85°C/185°F) — the safest
and most secure means of sanitization.
Beyond production systems,
VWS will also design and supply the 120m3 water storage
tanks capacity and the over a kilometer stainless steel
distribution loops.
Source:
http://www.veoliawaterst.com/
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Featured Videos
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your videos with everyone - promote your plant, your
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| Help Forum :
Hot Messages from the Help Forum
People post their requests
for help and offer their suggestions to others in our open
forum.
Mr. McVeigh needs help
starting up a DAF unit:
Does anyone have any
experience or general procedures regarding the startup,
operation and maintenance of DAF units. For operation i
believe its model specific.
We use a rectangular DAF
unit. The bio sludge mixed liquor (water + sludge flocs)
first passes through a pipe flocculator before the flotation
unit, Here the water/sludge is injected with a polymer
solution. These poly-electrolytes cause flocculation
(growing of the flocs) and help the clarification.
The stirring of the reagents
is realized by the flow through elbows and courbes of the
pipes (pipe flocculator). After the flocculation
clarification is realized by the flotation unit. At the end
of the flotation unit the effluent passes the outlet
overflow and little effluent compartment to the discharge
pipe.
Thanks,
Tim McVeigh
(Click
here to post a reply)
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Fair: We have a number of job openings on the Job
Fair, here are just a few of them we would like to share
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| About Us :
Water and Wastewater Newsletter
© 1999-2010 Water and Wastewater.com
Home page: http://www.waterandwastewater.com
Joseph Taylor, Editor
Water and Wastewater Newsletter
3948 South Third Street, No. 121
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Email: jtaylor@waterandwastewater.com
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::
Turning Rivers of Sludge into
Revenue Streams
::
Smith & Loveless Helps Flood
Victims
::
WWTP's may emit more N2O
than previously thought
::
Veolia to supply Water Plant for
Indonesian Facility
:: The News Center : More headlines
:: The Water and Wastewater Blog
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Water and Wastewater Plant
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Using Zeta Potential to Optimize Water Treatment
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Nu Flow Retrofits Sarasota County Sewer Pipes
Nu Flow, the world's
leading inside-infrastructure corporation, worked
with Sarasota County to rehabilitate 95 percent of
the county's sewer laterals with Nu Flow's
trenchless solution to retrofit broken, cracked and
leaking pipes. The pipe lining project delivered
huge savings by preventing rainwater infiltration
and the resulting excess water removal and treatment
requirements...(more) |
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Photographs
This week's
photo is of two 90-inch MagMaster electromagnetic flowmeters
from ABB measuring the effluent from the city's new $45
million pump station at the Southerly Wastewater Treatment
Plant. The two meters each have the capacity to measure 225
million gallons daily. The piping configuration provides for
adding a third 90-inch magmeter in the future.
Photo courtesy
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ABB
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