How to reduce energy consumption & increase the awareness of unnecessary energy usage across drinking and waste water sites?
I work for a high energy user, relying on electricity for most of our processes and treatment activities. Energy is one of our largest operating costs and as a result, we now face a significant energy consumption challenge.
Whilst we have already started to make our sites more efficient with the introduction of renewable energy generation, I am seeking ways to further reduce our energy consumption for the future.
Here are some resources to manage energy in the W&WW sector. Any questions, feel free to contact me.
Energy Conservation in Wastewater Treatment Facilities, Manual of Practice No. MFD-2, Water Environment Federation, Alexandria (VA), U.S.A.
Best Practices for Energy Management, Water Research Foundation, Denver (CO), U.S.A.
Energy Efficiency in the Water Industry: A Compendium of Best Practices and Case Studies
Global Water Research Coalition, London, England
Toolbox for Water Utility Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emission Management
Water Research Foundation, Denver (CO), U.S.A.
New York State Energy Research & Development Authority, Albany (NY), U.S.A., & Global Water Research Coalition, London, England
Water & Wastewater Industry Energy Best Practices Guidebook, Focus on Energy, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
Self-Audit of Wastewater Treatment Processes to Achieve Energy Optimization; Report No: CEC 500-11-003, California Energy Commission
Evaluation of Dynamic Energy Consumption of Advanced Water and Wastewater Treatment Technologies, California Energy Commission and Water Research Foundation
Energy Index Development for Benchmarking Water and Wastewater Utilities, California Energy Commission and Water Research Foundation
Public-Private Partnership Opportunities for Water and Water Resource Recovery Utility Energy Projects, Water Research Foundation and Water Environment & Reuse Foundation
I have developed an innovative technology "ABR" based on BIOREMEDIATION under Anoxic environment. it is tried to treat wastewater discharged in ponds, lakes, river as well as in Wastewater Treatment Plants to reduce the organic load in WWTP and save electricity. The treatment process is very simple and cost effective & completely electricity free. Nearly 60 projects have been completed based on this technology.
I'm completing an e-book based on this topic and shortly going to publish online. Once it's done I'll inform you to know more details about this process.
Daniel, I have, in Acuaducto de Bogotá, Colombia, good expierience in order to save costs , energy and drinking water consumption, via sectorization and pressure managment in your drinking water network.
I work for a company called Bactest and we make a product called Shepherd which exists for this very reason!
Shepherd is an Activated Sludge Monitoring and Management System that floats in an activated sludge lane and automatically samples every 60 minutes calculating an accurate BOD5 proxy every hour. This is displayed on the control panel adjacent to Shepherd so operators can take action to reduce aeration. In addition Shepherd transmits data to a Cloud based dashboard that can be accessed via the web and gives process engineers and managers a “bird’s eye” view of all of the plants where Shepherd has been deployed. Hourly emails from Shepherd mean that remote plants can be easily monitored without costly visits.
Uniquely Shepherd gives plant operators hourly information that enables them to turn the blowers down saving electricity and carbon footprint.
Shepherd can also identify toxic events and on a typical plant (100,000 PE) over a 5 month period
Shepherd predicted potential savings of over £40,000 pa and has identified:
Five ops issues (e.g. heavy rain, RAS stopped, blower malfunction)
Three toxic events (incl. primary sludge carry over)
we can offer solution that are 90% less in energy dependence ..if interested please reach us on info@noxxall.com / nanosciences@hotmail.com for more details...we can retrofit existing infra minor changes...
Hi Daniel, Depending on the system currently being used, you might like to consider using our Nanobubble technology which can significantly increase delivery of gas (guaranteed 90% gas transfer in one pass) and in so doing bring significant savings to energy costs. If interested let me know and I will send you some details. Best wishes, Tony Humphreys Nanobubble Solutions
Hello the only possibility to save energy it completely is the treatment of biological treatment of excrement. It eliminates all of the excrement, requires no emptying of the system, maintenance is limited to biological functioning, there is no handling or transport, it requires no palliative treatment. It is more productive
Yes, biological treatment of excrement is the most appropriate way to mange waste. In fact the waste is no more waste but resource, anaerobic digestion is a way forward. We have tried with Paper Recycling Effluent generating 350kw Electricity from the biogas produced by treating 80m3/hr effluent from the mill. Conventional DAF was projected to require about 100kW
Hi Daniel, PTG Water & Energy helps wastewater treatment facilities reduce their energy footprint and related costs by combining onsite energy generation and efficient heat-based disinfection. Please navigate to www.ptgwe.com for more information. Best, Tim Kingsbury
Published
by Tim Kingsbury, Chief Financial Officer at M2 Renewables
@ Mr Daniel: Most items listed by Mr Radhakrishanan: are absolutely essential. Besides, water /waste water quality and nominal power rating of various equipment is also required to frame an optimal strategy.
BTW, have you checked the PF and considered using VFD's for applications where friction head dominates?
both get the same question but also the same thought process or answer. Unless water is more saline, we can use microfiltration as the technique to solve most of water filtration, by gravity and no R.O or power is required at all
Energy usage in Water and Waste Water is plant and process specific. For the most of the facilities the major energy requirement is for the pumping for the process or transportation. Pump System Optimisation with precise sytem anlyses may significantly reduce the consumption.
Aeration is another energy guzzler, we have developed a proprietory system that significantly reduces the blower loads even for the most demanding suspended solid influent. I may be contacted on sarfraz@mahykhoory.com
I believe conservation is far more effective than generation, as a unit saved is more effective than a unit saved. Another significant outcome of Energy efficiency is system reliablity and reduced maintenenance cost.
Here we're talking original - biological elements-. Water, organic matter, urinates it, the biochemical components. I see nowhere in all of these explanations of the reactions produced by the technical action. He must know one thing: when man intervenes on biological - process - this one is stopped and mother NATURE begins the process of putrefaction. This process is irreversible and has as advantage to produce methane. Except that this production has implications on the environment without resolving the issue of the elimination of feces. On paper you can do anything. But at what cost and what result?
I am not surprised that your W&WWT sites are very energy intensive. In fact, the 2nd biggest expense for such facilities is energy cost after staffing; and ironically pump and motor systems are the biggest culprit toward this expense. Good thing is that you are addressing this issue. RE generally comes after implementing energy efficiency measures (EEMs) and demand side management (DSM). EEMs help reducing both energy usage and associated costs while DSM helps operators reducing energy costs by shifting consumption from on-peak hours to off-peak hours, if the facility is on such tariff structure. If you don't implement EEMs, RE simply reduces your demand on the grid electricity but doesn't reduce consumption. A few years ago, I managed a program to reduce energy consumption at California's W&WWT facilities; and frankly the out come was very impressive. So I think I can guide you where to start from and how to get to the end point. If you are interested, please contact me: sfc95823@yahoo.com. By the way, I am not selling any services or products; just trying to help you using my extensive experience in this field.
Hello sanitation of biotechnological treatment of lyseconcept is a very economical process with a comprehensive and definitive solution in management of feces
Use of Turbo blowers against Root blowers energy saved 25 to 30% of requirement in Aeration process in wastewater treatment. Higher Capital cost will also recovered in about two to two and half year. thereafter it start to generate saving of money in terms of power saving.
Hi Jaysukhlal Kagathara thank you for getting in contact and responding to my question. Across or Waste Water sites we already have a number of turbo blowers in operation and have a very robust an stringent asset management programme in place to ensure continual optimisation.
A bio digester is an excellent idea. There are 2 benefits. If you select an RNA microbial group to do the digesting you will no longer need any chlorination. A simple biogenerator would be able to collect the electrons created during the breakdown process. No pathogens and ready to become potable water again. No need for two systems. 100% recycling of water. Many other useful byproducts .
Hi Guy McGowen - thanks for responding to my question. Are you able to send me some information or links to bio digesters that have very large scale application. I cannot find any that would suit our needs online but if you believe you may have details of products that might fit my needs please do send me the details.
If you are running a wastewater plant why not using a digester, creating biogas that will run the generators to give you "free" power to run the whole system WTP and WWTP together. This is not new and is used in many countries.
Published
by Jan Verwater, International Sales Manager at Prime Solutions
3 Comments
Hi Jan Verwater - thanks for replying. Currently a number of our sites utilise Combined Heat and Power (CHP) technologies to produce electricity providing a solution to rising operational costs.
As far concern with domestic Sewage treatment, with any anaerobic process bio-gas can be generated but it has a limitation and which can not provide self sustained run of whole STP. It can hardly satisfy about 25 to 30% requirement if digesters are sucessfully operates.
Gas recovery is a good idea but it isn't cheap. DCWater has installed a Cambi system in their wastewater plant and it generates about 1/3 of their plant electricity needs. However, it cost upwards of 300 million USD.
Hi RADHAKRISHNA MURTHY GUNTUPALLI - thank you for your reply. This is part of an on-going project to reduce energy consumption & increase the awareness of unnecessary energy usage across Drinking and Waste Water Sites.
We have a large number of diverse and complex sites and due to nature of commercial sensitivity I am wary about posting that information in such an open forum.
Instead I am hoping that by posting a question on this platform I will be able to glean innovative solutions by interacting and learning from the experiences of professionals around the world.
I had already told in various forums 2 things: Micro filtration can save lots of energy and water if in case the water does not have high salinity, in which case you need a membrane filtration run on power. Otherwise, gravity filtration would do. Second on STP, if there is source segregation of the water, the toilet one and the bathing, washing one both through separate lines, we would do insitu bio-digestion, bacterial treatment good enough to clean the water when it reaches the ground. The concept called STP can be done away with!
Hi Chandrasekaran J. - thank you for responding. Interestingly enough the company that I work for are currently in the process of building a new WTW in our operation area, and is the first of its kind in the UK.
It will use innovative and cutting edge water treatment process designed and developed by Dutch water technology company PWNT. The new technology features SIX suspended ion exchange with resin regeneration system, ILCA inline coagulation and CeraMac C90 ceramic membrane microfiltration
Hi Daniel Carthew, interestingly, I have a fellowship running with Open University under Royal Academy of engineering and we are presently working on textile dye alleviation from river water dumped with textile toxic dyes. Now we propose to have some work on these lines we discussed above. Would you email me your profile and a synopsis of how different your technology is to me by email? Thanks chandra@watsan.in