GHD switches on the tap for new water technologies

One of the world’s leading engineering, architecture, environmental and construction services companies, GHD, is helping pioneer new technologies that could make the Australian water industry more equitable and sustainable.

The company has been recognised alongside clients and partners at the Australian Water Association’s Queensland Water Awards for prize-winning work in two categories: Program Innovation and Research Innovation.

The Program Innovation award was presented to Queensland Urban Utilities (QUU) and GHD for trialling a new technology for the first time in Australia. Civil engineering site works were undertaken by Diona (civil engineering contractors).

A Laser Doppler Velocimetry system from German organisation Optolution was used to assess the accuracy of large water meters, which measure how much treated water QUU (and other distribution retailers in South East Queensland) purchase from the bulk water authority Seqwater. An error of one percent in the largest bulk water meter in southeast Queensland would have a respective billing error of approximately $1.8M per annum.

“Given the cost of potential metering errors, it is imperative that the bulk water billing meter fleet is both highly accurate and highly reliable,” says Edgar Johnson, GHD’s Water Efficiency Specialist.

“The project found that undetected, potentially costly measurement errors do occur in existing bulk metering installations, which could not be detected previously using conventional assessment techniques. More accurate metering of water volumes would translate into fairer and more equitable allocation of billing and costs.”

The Research Innovation award was given to a project funded by the Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence and undertaken by Advanced Water Management Centre (AWMC) at The University of Queensland together with QUU, Melbourne Water, GHD and Wide Bay Water.

The research investigated next generation technologies that can provide low energy water recycling. To achieve this the approach has been to maximise bioenergy recovery from wastewater by using anaerobic technologies and removing nitrogen without using organic carbon.

“The paradigm of wastewater treatment is changing. No longer do we only want to manage pollutants to achieve low levels of nutrients in the effluent. Our new objectives also include recovering energy and resources from wastewater,” David Solley, GHD’s Principal Process Engineer says.

“Conversion of organic carbon anaerobically in wastewater is crucial for energy recovery. Currently a lot of carbon is used to remove nitrogen and some is converted to carbon dioxide aerobically. Achieving both nitrogen removal and energy recovery within a single treatment system is the main challenge for our industry.”

As part of the project, mainstream Anammox processes were demonstrated at pilot-scale for the first time in Australia. Operational data showed that these processes have the potential to significantly reduce the cost of wastewater treatment compared to current technologies. Based on this research, mainstream anaerobic treatment of all wastewater and Anammox technology are now being considered for full-scale application in Queensland and Victoria.