Israel utility aims for 5% NRW with i2O

Israeli water utility Mei Carmel has awarded British smart water network company i2O a contract to use its loggers to monitor and measure the performance of its water network.

Mei Carmel supplies more than 24 million cubic meters of water a year to 260,000 residents and thousands of businesses in the city of Haifa, Israel.

The utility will use i2O’s dNet loggers and iNet visualisation and alarms service to improve the performance of its distribution network and reduce non-revenue water levels to less than five percent of supply.

Forty i2O loggers will be deployed across Mei Carmel’s network to record and communicate detailed data relating to water demand, flow and pressure.

Data gathered will inform Mei Carmel’s network optimisation strategy, enabling the water utility to adjust supply pressure to match demand, eliminating the excess pressure that accelerates leakage and bursts.

DR.nrw, an Israeli consulting firm specialising in water network optimisation, performed the network analysis that lead to this tender.

They will conduct the installation of the i2O loggers and, through collaboration with i2O and using their smart network solutions, will carry out ongoing analysis to ensure that Mei Carmel gain the maximum benefits from their investment.

Wastewater could heat Scottish cities

Sewers in Scotland contain enough heat to warm a city the size of Glasgow for more than four months a year, according to new data. Figures released by Scottish Renewables found that 921 million litres are flushed down toilets and plugholes in Scotland daily.

With this water in UK sewers as warm as 21C, the group claimed that renewable energy technologies like heat pumps and wastewater recovery systems could be used to harness that energy potential. Capturing such warmth could prevent more than 10,000 tonnes of harmful CO₂ entering the atmosphere every year, the analysis has shown.

Scotland’s daily 921 million litres of wastewater and sewage are transmitted through more than 31,000 miles of sewers to over 1,800 wastewater treatment facilities.

The data was produced by utility Scottish Water subsidiary Scottish Water Horizons. Heat maps are now being used by the organisation to explore locations where heat recovery schemes could be developed

The Scottish Government’s draft Energy Strategy contains an ambitious proposal that 50% of all energy (heat, electricity and transport) should come from renewable sources by 2030.

Stephanie Clark, policy manager at Scottish Renewables, said: “These new figures show the enormous scale of the energy we are literally flushing away every day.”

Saudi Aramco invests into Irish start-up Oxymem

Irish start up Oxymem has followed up its partnership with the Dow company and has attracted investment from oil giant Saudi Aramco.

The company has made headway since commercialising its Membrane Aerated Biofilm Rector (MABR) technology, with a partnership signed with the Dow Chemical Company last year. Although the investment amount from Aramco has not been disclosed, Bruce Niven, CIO of Amamco’s investment arm SAEV was reported by Silicon Republic as saying the MABR process was “compelling”.

In an analysis of the technology, WWi magazine reported that trials carried out at utility Severn Trent showed effluent being treated at an energy cost of 0.2 kW per cubic metre.

Water leakage targeted in utility hackathon

Hackers and computer crime may have got recent media attention for the wrong reasons but now a hackathon has been organised to tackle the global challenge of water leakage. Experts from global giant Microsoft came from around the globe to lead the search for answers on the problem of water leakage, as part of utility Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival held in mid July. A three day hackathon saw expert data crunchers from across the country join a Microsoft team comprising specialists from the UK, America and Hong Kong, to focus on tackling the subject of water leakage.

Morocco ro development to expand capacity

A contract has been signed for the expansion of Abengoa’s seawater desalination plant currently being built 45 km from Agadir, Morocco. The country’s minister of economy and finance and minister of agriculture met to sign for an expansion of the project up to 450,000 cubic metres per day, according to Morocco World News. Spanish firm Abengoa started construction of the project back in March 2015, in partnership with the National Office of Electricity and Drinking Water, known as ONEE. The development will use ultrafiltration membranes for pre-treatment followed by reverse osmosis to supply 500,000 people in the region.