E-Learning

Increasingly stringent legislation in the European Union has driven down SO2 emissions on many processes from the 100's mg.m-3 to the 10's mg.m-3, or in some cases even lower. Consequently, the measurement challenge to accredited providers of compliance measurements and EN 14181 QAL2 calibrations has become increasingly difficult, and meeting legislative uncertainty requirements far from a trivial matter. We take stock of current capability for measuring this important pollutant and present s...

Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry is a workhorse for the analysis of semivolatile organic compounds in environmental samples. The Agilent Intuvo 9000 GC represents a significant advancement in gas chromatography and provides a number of advantages for semivolatile analysis. In this presentation, the performance of the Intuvo GC is demonstrated for the analysis of semivolatiles based upon the specifications of USEPA method 8270D. Included in this study is an evaluation of the Intuvo during...

Best Practices for Environmental Sample Preparation and Testing Abstract: Environmental laboratories adhere to strict procedures to ensure that they remain certified and that their test results meet regulatory standards. During this session, Matt Groff, a veteran representative to environmental labs from GE Life Sciences, will discuss ways in which environmental sample preparation and testing can be run more efficiency and accurately, while meeting all the necessary requirements.  With o...

Emerging contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals, are a growing environmental concern.  These contaminants have been detected in environmental waters (such as surface water, ground and wastewater flows) at concentrations ranging from µg L-1 to ng L-1 level.  The majority are unregulated in the environment and as a result the risk assessment and ecotoxicological effect of the contaminants, their metabolites and/or transformation products are relatively unknown. To meet the prerequisite o...

Oxygen transfer in biological wastewater treatment represent the most energy demanding step of aerobic processes. Submerged aerators are designed to maximize the available surface for exchange by generating as fine bubbles as possible. Potential effects of process water characteristics on bubble sizes are too often not considered in wastewater treatment, while, liquid properties are known to have important effects on bubble size distribution (BSD) and transfer capabilities. The use of appropr...

Non-Revenue water is more a management issue than an infrastructure and Engineering challenge in Africa. Poor management and decision are the result of 65% of total non-revenue water. While the cost of reducing non-revenue water is very little compared to the economic and political cost of loss, very little has been done to address it. Nairobi City water and Sewerage company has in the last five years been proactive in managing the loss of water related to management and decision (Referred to...

In addition to being the largest water and wastewater utility in England with nearly 1,900 DMAs, Anglian Water's drive for innovation spurred an ambitious vision for leveraging Big Data to streamline operations to better service its 6.4M customers today and for future years to come. This vision dubbed the IRIS programme is a five-year project that came to fruition in 2015 with the completion of the cornerstone project, the replacement of one of the UK's oldest telemetry systems. This system c...

Conventional biological wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) include one or more secondary settling tanks. Their primary function is to clarify wastewater and prevent solids to exit the WWTP and enter the receiving water body. In addition, settling tanks help to thicken sludge that is returned to the biological reactors, which ultimately helps to maintain a high biomass concentration. Thickening also increases the concentration of the excess sludge, thereby reducing excess sludge treatment cos...

This work evaluates UV-Vis spectrometry as a tool to estimate nitrite in a continuously operated urine nitrification reactor. The need for such a tool originates from the sensitive urine nitrification systems which need control for stable operation. At this time, the LASSO model identification method which selects a small number of UV-vis absorbance wavelengths proves sufficient to capture the most important dynamics of the nitrite concentration. This is likely sufficient for stabilizing cont...

Servelec Technologies, the leading provider of business optimisation solutions in the UK water industry, has successfully delivered a number of trials of its pioneering FlowSure software to UK water companies. Trials will be described that have demonstrated that annual six figure net savings can be realised by use of the software. More than a simple leakage detection system, FlowSure is self-learning anomaly detection software that helps to identify and predict emerging network events to enab...