Water Online

July 2016

Water Innovations gives Water and Wastewater Engineers and end-users a venue to find project solutions and source valuable product information. We aim to educate the engineering and operations community on important issues and trends.

Issue link: http://wateronline.epubxp.com/i/694011

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 22 of 41

supply, and the Advanced Water Treatment Plants are now closed. With hindsight and with secured public acceptance, it might have been much cheaper to use the product water as "direct potable" to the nearby Mount Crosby Water Treatment Plant. The Gold Coast, Sydney, and Melbourne desalination plants have never had regular use, though 50 GL (11.4 BG) of water has been ordered from the Melbourne plant for 2016. The two Perth desalination plants have been in full operation since constructed; that in Adelaide has been kept running at 10 percent capacity. The investment in alternative water sources (some would say too generously) has had an impact on the capital management and costs of water utilities. The Victorian Auditor-General observed in 2013 that interest- bearing liabilities had increased from 2009 to 2013 by 248 percent in that state, with interest representing 21 percent of total operating costs. Servicing the debt and repaying it are now major challenges for the water industry in Australia's capital cities. Future Focus Towards the end of the drought, the Federal Government established the National Urban Water and Desalination Plan to "reduce reliance on rainfall dependent sources by supporting infrastructure projects and research in desalination, water recycling, and stormwater harvesting and reuse." This program included funding of research over five years for a newly created National Centre for Excellence in Desalination (NCED) in Perth and an Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence (AWRCoE) in Brisbane, each supported with AUD$20 million, to which additional funding was added by co-investment from governments, research agencies, and water utilities. The National Centre for Excellence in Desalination had objectives of leading and coordinating national research in energy-efficient desalination technology, building national capacity and capabilities in desalination, and to advance the science of desalination with specific application to Australia's unique needs and challenges. The Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence had four goals: incorporating new technologies; establishing a national validation framework for elements of water recycling; having recycled water accepted for drinking; and developing a national knowledge base for recycled water. Industrial/Decentralized Reuse Initially, a summary of learnings from already-introduced recycling plants across Australia showed that unexpected circumstances could change the direction of introducing water recycling. New technologies explored included the use of recycled water in the food industry. Recycled water has been promoted in the meat industry, and a pilot installation of water reuse was made in a dairy factory where limited access to additional water was precluding expansion. Elsewhere, the use of recycled water from dairy manufacturing was evaluated to support pasture irrigation to increase milk supply. Water restrictions had already induced two large Queensland breweries to turn to water recycling to maintain production. It was recognized that the economics of business cases would ultimately determine whether recycling was adopted by industries. Modeling programs have been developed for commercial use to evaluate the economic viability of reuse proposals. Hydrogeological modeling was adopted in Perth, where limits to reticulated water availability, declining groundwater availability, and seawater intrusion were constraining industry expansion in the city's principal heavy industry area. Accessing water from a nearby treated wastewater 20 wateronline.com n Water Innovations WATERREUSE Figure 3. Melbourne Water uses these ozone generators as components for treating secondary effluent at its Eastern Treatment Plant at Carrum, using a pre-ozone/biological media filtration/postozone/UV/chlorine process train to improve discharge quality and produce water suitable for horticultural irriga- tion and potential third (purple) pipe domestic use. Figure 4. A pilot plant was built at Luggage Point, Brisbane, to check the MF/ RO technology before the full scale Advanced Water Treatment Plants were built, highlighting the need to recognize that influents to recycling and desalination plants can vary considerably.

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Water Online - July 2016