£2.5m to promote water industry innovation
15 Oct 2012
Grants totalling over £2.5m have been awarded to seven research projects that aim to develop processes and technologies that will safeguard future water supplies.
The collaborative projects will be led by Arvia Technology Ltd, Balfour Beatty Utility Solutions, Cambrensis Ltd, Halcrow Group Ltd, KEE Process Ltd, Quest UAV and Watershed Associates Ltd.
All of the companies have been set the challenge of creating a new technology or process that will either save or recycle 1,000 million litres per day worth of water - equivalent to roughly the same volume of water it would take to fill 400 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Arvia Technology has developed award-winning technology for the destruction of organics in water and wastewater using a patented adsorbent material. Their project will investigate the properties of the process for the treatment and reuse of industrial process water, in order to prove the technology at a large scale.
The companies hope to develop a new processes that will either save 1,000 million litres per day worth of water
The SAVE Water project led by Balfour Beatty will develop the first in-pipe assessment vehicle which will work in live conditions, delivering a full sensing package of optical and acoustic inspection while also carrying out a complete structural assessment of the pipe material and any associated linings.
The consortium led by Cambrensis plans to apply and test an intelligent information and communication technologies system for “real time abstraction and discharge monitoring”. This will create a flexible system to optimise water resource management and replace the current outdated licensing system.
Halcrow’s HYDRA project will develop a software platform for water resource management, an open and flexible system where data management, display, user interaction, and solution engines will be standardised and shared for advanced water resource planning. HYDRA will enable vast gains in water security to be achieved by integrating management and strategic planning.
The MICROCAT (microwave assisted catalytic treatment of agricultural wastewater) project led by KEE Process Ltd (Aylesbury) aims to develop step-change technology for the treatment and recycling of agricultural and industrial wastewaters which offers a potential global saving of up to 17,000 million litres per day of fresh water.
The QuestEarthWater project, led by Quest UAV (Northumberland), will develop a new integrated unmanned aerial vehicle for assessing hidden water supplies. The ‘drone’ will deploy imaging sensors that can capture very detailed pictures of the landscape so that hidden water resources can be quantified.
The Smart Leakage Detection Pipes project, led by Watershed Associates (Leighton Buzzard), will develop an easy to install leak detection system for existing and new water pipes. Using self-contained sensor nodes on the outside of the pipe, the system will detect changes in pressure and vibration to indicate the formation of leaks and their location as they occur.
Projecs will be funded jointly by the Technology Strategy Board, Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Natural Environment Research Council and Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, the projects will address overseas and UK water security challenges.
The total cost of the projects, including contributions from the participating companies, is in excess of £5.6m.
