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First Underground Water
Treatment Plant Opened
 Ireland
-- Regional Development Minister, David Cairns today opened
the award winning Fofanny Water Treatment Works - the only
underground water treatment facility in Ireland.
The £18 million treatment works
in the Mournes has been landscaped with local vegetation
including over 10,000 native species of heather planted on
the roof.
The Minister said: "This
innovative new treatment works has been designed to treat
over 50 million liters of water a day. This will ensure that
over 100,000 consumers across south Down and parts of Armagh
served by this facility will receive the highest quality
drinking water.
"This is just one example of the
scale of investment required to improve water and sewerage
infrastructure throughout Northern Ireland. For the
five-year period up to 2007-08, some £1.1 billion of capital
investment has been made available to upgrade the water and
sewerage infrastructure - the challenge is to sustain this
investment.
"The introduction of water and
sewerage charges will allow this investment to take place to
provide a better service for all."
The Minister, along with two
school children from St Malachy's Primary School in Kilcoo,
planted a tree to mark the completion of the extensive
landscaping program involving 6,550 trees.
Commenting on the unique design,
the Minister said: "Water Service has successfully
integrated what is essentially an industrial building into
one of Northern Ireland's most visited regions. The clever
underground design allows Water Service to offer a high
level of service without compromising on the beauty of the
surrounding Mournes landscape."
The new Fofanny facility is able
to operate mainly by a gravity system, reducing the need for
pumping. To maximize sustainability, a turbine has been
installed into the building which creates green energy - 10%
of that needed to run the entire plant.
The Fofanny project took first
prize in the Achieving Excellence in the Public Sector
category of the 2006 Construction Employers
Federation/Specify Construction Excellence Awards. The
contract was carried out by a joint venture partnership
between Earth Tech Engineering Ltd and Farrans
(Construction) Ltd. Architectural and landscape design
consultants for the project were McAdam Design.
Source:
http://www.nics.gov.uk/
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This
newsletter is sponsored by:
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Wastewater Plant Turns Kitchen
Grease Into Biogas
 MILLBRAE,
CA -- Chevron Energy Solutions, a unit of Chevron
Corporation, and the City of Millbrae today celebrated the
completion of new facilities at Millbrae's Water Pollution
Control Plant that use a common urban waste -- inedible
kitchen grease from restaurants -- to naturally produce
biogas for generating renewable power and heat to treat the
city's wastewater.
The unique system, engineered and
installed by Chevron Energy Solutions, includes a grease
receiving station and an expanded cogenerator as well as
other upgrades that result in annual revenues and energy
savings of $366,000 for Millbrae while nearly doubling the
amount of "green power" produced at the plant.
More than 3,000 gallons of
restaurant grease -- the kind washed from grills and pans --
will be delivered to the plant each day by grease hauling
companies, which pay a city fee for disposals.
Microorganisms in the plant's digester tanks eat the grease
and other organic matter, naturally producing methane gas to
fuel the plant's new 250-kilowatt microturbine cogenerator
to produce electricity for wastewater treatment. Meanwhile,
excess heat produced by the cogenerator warms the digester
tanks to their optimum temperature for methane production.
"This project clearly
demonstrates that cities can develop renewable energy
economically, with multiple benefits to urban communities,"
said Jim Davis, president of Chevron Energy Solutions. "By
applying proven technologies and looking at the entire waste
stream in new ways, the City of Millbrae has cost
effectively upgraded its facilities, reduced its operating
costs, created new revenue and solved environmental
challenges all at the same time."
"This innovative project brings
new meaning to the term 'sustainable development,'" said
Millbrae Mayor Robert Gottschalk. "Through our partnership
with Chevron Energy Solutions, we're taking an urban waste
and turning it into an asset for the city and the
environment."
Nationally, restaurants produce
an average of 14 pounds of inedible grease per capita
annually -- a total of nearly 4.2 billion pounds each year
in the United States alone. Much of this grease is disposed
of in landfills, where it releases methane -- a potent
greenhouse gas -- as it decomposes, sometimes directly to
the atmosphere. Millbrae's grease receiving station will
reduce the amount of grease sent to landfills.
The grease and other organic
matter will produce enough biogas at the plant to generate
about 1.7 million kilowatt hours annually, which will meet
80 percent of the plant's power needs and reduce its
electricity purchases significantly. This lower demand for
utility-generated power reduces carbon dioxide emissions by
1.2 million pounds annually, the same amount of carbon
dioxide absorbed by planting about 170 acres of trees.
The total cost of the project,
$5.5 million, was reduced by about $200,000 with a rebate
awarded through the state of California's Self-Generation
Incentive Program administered by Pacific Gas and Electric
Company. The net amount, along with maintenance costs, is
being funded entirely by savings from the new system and,
therefore, will have no effect on the city's wastewater
treatment rates.
The project's completion is being
celebrated today at an event in Millbrae attended by
national, state and local government officials and
representatives from business, environmental organizations
and academia.
"This is the only wastewater
treatment plant in the U.S. to receive and process inedible
grease in a self-funding, purpose-built system that
successfully addresses so many challenges simultaneously,"
said Dick York, superintendent of the Millbrae plant. "It's
a complete solution that could be adopted in many cities
around the country."
Chevron Energy Solutions partners
with institutions and businesses to improve facilities;
increase efficiency; reduce energy consumption and costs;
and ensure reliable, high-quality energy for critical
operations. The company employs proven technologies to meet
customers' specific needs, including infrastructure
technologies, energy controls, solar photovoltaics, fuel
cells, biomass and other systems.
For more information about
Chevron Energy Solutions, please visit
www.chevronenergy.com
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'Nanorust' Cleans Arsenic From
Drinking Water
 Houston,
TX -- The discovery of unexpected magnetic interactions
between ultrasmall specks of rust is leading scientists at
Rice University's Center for Biological and Environmental
Nanotechnology (CBEN) to develop a revolutionary, low-cost
technology for cleaning arsenic from drinking water.
The
technology holds promise for millions of people in India,
Bangladesh and other developing countries where thousands of
cases of arsenic poisoning each year are linked to poisoned
wells. The new technique is described in the Nov. 10 issue
of Science magazine.
"Arsenic contamination in drinking water is a global
problem, and while there are ways to remove arsenic, they
require extensive hardware and high-pressure pumps that run
on electricity," said center director and lead author Vicki
Colvin. "Our approach is simple and requires no electricity.
While the nanoparticles used in the publication are
expensive, we are working on new approaches to their
production that use rust and olive oil, and require no more
facilities than a kitchen with a gas cooktop."
CBEN's
technology is based on a newly discovered magnetic
interaction that takes place between particles of rust that
are smaller than viruses.
"Magnetic particles this small were thought to only interact
with a strong magnetic field," Colvin said. "Because we had
just figured out how to make these particles in different
sizes, we decided to study just how big of magnetic field we
needed to pull the particles out of suspension. We were
surprised to find that we didn’t need large electromagnets
to move our nanoparticles, and that in some cases hand-held
magnets could do the trick."
The
experiments involved suspending pure samples of
uniform-sized iron oxide particles in water. A magnetic
field was used to pull the particles to out of solution,
leaving only the purified water. Colvin's team measured the
tiny particles after they were removed from the water and
ruled out the most obvious explanation: the particles were
not clumping together after being tractored by the magnetic
field.
Colvin, professor of chemistry, said the experimental
evidence instead points to a magnetic interaction between
the nanoparticles themselves.
Co-author Doug Natelson explains, “ As particle size is
reduced the force on the particles does drop rapidly, and
the old models were correct in predicting that very big
magnetic fields would be needed to move these particles.
"In
this case, it turns out that the nanoparticles actually
exert forces on each other," said Natelson, associate
professor of physics and astronomy and in electrical and
computer engineering. "So, once the hand-held magnets start
gently pulling on a few nanoparticles and get things going,
the nanoparticles effectively work together to pull
themselves out of the water.”
Colvin
said, "It's yet another example of the unique sorts of
interactions we see at the nanoscale."
Because iron is well known for its ability to bind arsenic,
Colvin's group repeated the experiments in
arsenic-contaminated water and found that the particles
would reduce the amount of arsenic in contaminated water to
levels well below the EPA's threshold for U.S. drinking
water.
Colvin's group has been collaborating with researchers from
Rice Professor Mason Tomson's group in civil and
environmental engineering to further develop the technology
for arsenic remediation. Colvin said Tomson's preliminary
calculations indicate the method could be practical for
settings where traditional water treatment technologies are
not possible. Because the starting materials for generating
the nanorust are inexpensive, she said the cost of the
materials could be quite low if manufacturing methods are
scaled up.
In
addition, Colvin's graduate student, Cafer Yavuz, has been
working for several months to refine a method that villagers
in the developing world could use to prepare the iron oxide
nanoparticles. The primary raw materials are rust and fatty
acids, which can be obtained from olive oil or coconut oil,
Colvin said.
Additional co-authors include research scientist Amy Kan,
postdoctoral research associate William Yu and graduate
students J.T. Mayo, Arjun Prakash, Joshua Falkner, Sujin
Yean, Lili Cong and Heather Shipley.
The
research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
Source: http://www.rice.edu/
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UCLA
Engineers Develop Nanotech Desal Membrane
 Los
Angeles, CA -- Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of
Engineering and Applied Science today announced they have
developed a new reverse osmosis (RO) membrane that promises to
reduce the cost of seawater desalination and wastewater
reclamation.
Reverse osmosis desalination uses
extremely high pressure to force saline or polluted waters
through the pores of a semi-permeable membrane. Water molecules
under pressure pass through these pores, but salt ions and other
impurities cannot, resulting in highly purified water.
The new membrane, developed by civil
and environmental engineering assistant professor Eric Hoek and
his research team, uses a uniquely cross-linked matrix of
polymers and engineered nanoparticles designed to draw in water
ions but repel nearly all contaminants. These new membranes are
structured at the nanoscale (the width of human hair is
approximately 100,000 nanometers) to create molecular tunnels
through which water flows more easily than contaminants.
Unlike the current class of
commercial RO membranes, which simply filter water through a
dense polymer film, Hoek’s membrane contains specially
synthesized nanoparticles dispersed throughout the polymer —
known as a nanocomposite material.
“The nanoparticles are designed to
attract water and are highly porous, soaking up water like a
sponge, while repelling dissolved salts and other impurities,”
Hoek said. “The water-loving nanoparticles embedded in our
membrane also repel organics and bacteria, which tend to clog up
conventional membranes over time.”
With these improvements, less energy
is needed to pump water through the membranes. Because they
repel particles that might ordinarily stick to the surface, the
new membranes foul more slowly than conventional ones. The
result is a water purification process that is just as effective
as current methods but more energy efficient and potentially
much less expensive. Initial tests suggest the new membranes
have up to twice the productivity — or consume 50 percent less
energy — reducing the total expense of desalinated water by as
much as 25 percent.
“The need for a sustainable,
affordable supply of clean water is a key priority for our
nation’s future and especially for that of California — the
fifth largest economy in the world,” Hoek said. “It is essential
that we reduce the overall cost of desalination — including
energy demand and environmental issues — before a major drought
occurs and we lack the ability to efficiently and effectively
increase our water supply.”
A critical limitation of current RO
membranes is that they are easily fouled — bacteria and other
particles build up on the surface and clog it. This fouling
results in higher energy demands on the pumping system and leads
to costly cleanup and replacement of membranes. Viable
alternative desalination technologies are few, though population
growth, over-consumption and pollution of the available fresh
water supply make desalination and water reuse ever more
attractive alternatives.
With his new membrane, Hoek hopes to
address the key challenges that limit more widespread use of RO
membrane technology by making the process more robust and
efficient.
“I think the biggest mistake we can
make in the field of water treatment is to assume that reverse
osmosis technology is mature and that there is nothing more to
be gained from fundamental research,” Hoek said. “We still have
a long way to go to fully explore and develop this technology,
especially with the exciting new materials that can be created
through nanotechnology.
Hoek is working with NanoH2O, LLP, an
early-stage partnership, to develop his patent-pending
nanocomposite membrane technology into a new class of
low-energy, fouling-resistant membranes for desalination and
water reuse. He anticipates the new membranes will be
commercially available within the next year or two.
The school also is home to the Water
Technology Research Center, founded in 2005, which seeks to
advance the state of desalination technology and to train the
next generation of desalination experts. Hoek co-founded the
center with UCLA chemical engineering professor and center
director Yoram Cohen. Hoek also collaborates with UCLA’s
California NanoSystems Institute.
For information on product licensing,
visit www.nanoh2o.com
Source: http://www.ucla.edu/
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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. Salman needs help with biogas production:
I am involved in the
operation of an anaerobic digester utilizing biogas-induced
mixing arrangement (BIMA) and based on cow manure. The
capacity of the digester in 5000 m3.
I am facing some problem in
increasing the feed to the digester. Currently, the
digester feed in 105 m3/day but whenever we try to increase
the feed by 10% or more after a stabilization time of 1
week, the gas generation drops considerably.
Therefore, we are unable to increase the feed to the
required level.
I wish to know how can I
increase the feed without compromising with gas generation.
Can anyone help me in this regard? (Click
here to post a reply)
Regards,
Mr. Z. Salman
z.salman@gmail.com
Mr. Nolan needs help with high BOD:
One of our plants continue to
have high ammonia (up to 20+) after being knocked out of
service by some kind of acidic waste. We have been
investigating and found >2,000 mg/L phenol at a tank trucks
cleaning company discharging into our plant.
BOD for the same sample is
>19,000 and pH is >11, a reverse of what knocked out our
plant in the first place. Could phenol be the cause of
our problem? I'm wondering because bacteria seemed to
be able to digest the phenol BOD sample but not get wiped
out.
Maybe acidic waste could
knock out our plant but not caustic waste? Our
neighboring city's treatment plant has recently been knocked
out by some kind of slug waste and they blamed it on
chemical tankers.
(Click
here to post a reply)
Thanks,
James Nolan
jyn0999@yahoo.com
Help Forum:
Share your
expertise with others in our
Help
Forum. |
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| From the Job
Fair: Wastewater Plant
Operator - Oshkosh, WI
The City of Oshkosh (pop.
65,500) is offering an opportunity for a self-motivated
individual to join our team as Plant Operator (Liquids) in
our Department of Public Works, Wastewater Treatment Plant
division.
This position is responsible
for care and efficient operation of the city wastewater
treatment plant through performance of a variety of skilled
and technical work in operating, maintaining, repairing,
recording wastewater plant operations on an assigned shift.
Work includes covering a large working area, which contains
several operating units of the wastewater treatment plant
during an assigned shift.
Education & Experience:
Graduation from High School or GED equivalent. State of
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Wastewater
Treatment Plant Operator Certification. Twelve months (12)
experience in the operation of pumps and similar equipment
or successful completion of an accredited water or
wastewater treatment program. Valid State of Wisconsin
Drivers license.
The 2006 salary range is
$19.48 - $20.66 per hour, plus an excellent benefit package.
Applications must be received by December 15, 2006. To
request application material for this position, please
contact:
City of Oshkosh Personnel
Office
Room 401, City Hall
215 Church Avenue
Oshkosh, WI
Telephone: (920) 236-5110
Web site:
http://www.ci.oshkosh.wi.us/Personnel/Procedures.htm
The City of Oshkosh is an
EOE/MFH Employer
The Job Fair:
A free
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for companies who are looking to add talented people to
their staff.
Do you have a position
you need to fill? Visit the Job
Fair. |
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| About Us :
Water and Wastewater Newsletter
© 1999-2006 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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you have company news, a new product, new service or other
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Please submit articles via e-mail, only to: news@waterandwastewater.com |
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::
First Underground Water
Treatment
Plant Opened
::
Wastewater Plant Turns Kitchen
Grease Into Biogas
::
'Nanorust' Cleans Arsenic From
Drinking Water
::
UCLA Engineers Develop Nanotech
Desal Membrane
:: The News Center : More headlines
:: The Water and Wastewater Blog
:: Help Forum
::
Water and Wastewater Plant
Directory : Featured Plant
:: The Job Fair
:: Top Picks at Amazon.com
:: Ask Tom! Column!
:: 151,000+ visitors in October !
:: Call For Photographs!
:: Subscribe, Unsubscribe
:: Archive Information
:: About Us
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| Hi Everyone,
Some interesting news this week
on cogeneration with waste grease and nano particles, and of
course the incredible underground water treatment plant,
read on!
Please drop me a line
and let us know what your company is up to. We are
always interested in new developments and technologies that
we can share with our readers.
With over 10,000+ subscribers,
our goal is to provide information
to improve your business by using the resources available on the
Internet.
Thanks,
Joe Taylor, Editor
jtaylor@waterandwastewater.com
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| This
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Concentrating RO Reject Streams with VSEP
Guest article by Dr. Brad Culkin, New Logic Research,
Inc.
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 We
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Featured
Case History |
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Award Winning Separation System Protects MBR
Management of a 1.2 MGD
wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) here reports
successful installation of a solids separation and
removal system which protect membranes in its new,
state-of-the-art membrane bioreactor (MBR) addition.
Meanwhile, immediate maintenance benefits have been
gained through elimination of aerator plugging in
its three lagoons...(more) |
More case histories...
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| Call For
Photographs
This weeks photo
is an Aquastore elevated water storage tank in Malaysia.
Aquastore tanks can be designed to meet AWWA-D103 standards
and glass coating is ANSI/NSF 61 certified for potable water
storage.
Photo courtesy
Tom Renich of
Aquastore
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| Dr. Michael
Richard, Microbiologist
 Michael
is a wastewater treatment microbiologist and he provides
microbiological analysis and filament identification for
bulking, foaming and other treatment problems for activated
sludge systems, lagoons and filters. He is the co-author of
the definitive manual on activated sludge microbiology and
has received numerous awards.
Click here
to visit his web site.
Michael has become a member
of the
Help Forum this Fall.
Click here to read his profile. |
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