IFAT Newsletter Summary

New: Memthane®, for industrial high-strength wastewater Production of bioplastics from sludge

Zero pollution, 100% responsibility

Global leader in water treatment

Soft and uranium-free drinking water

The power of sludge

Exelys™: energy-efficient thermal hydrolysis

Roche uses energy from wastewater

Water reuse and energy recovery in France

Reduce CAPEX and OPEX with new design for digesters

Treating the Fukushima contaminated water

Largest hybrid desalination plant in the world

Manage water supplies more efficiently

Zero liquid discharge at Shell’s GTL complex in Quatar

Innovative water treatment on world’s first floating LNG

Water reuse plant in Australian office building

Emergency mobile drinking water systems

Three awards to Swedish wastewater treatment plant

Reduced carbon footprint with CARIX®

Heavy metal removal without sludge generation

Dragon Mining improves efficiency of wastewater treatment

Cost-effective solution to treat ammonia

State-of-the-art online control of wastewater systems

Veolia Water Newswww.veoliawaterst.com IFAT 2012 Edition | Hall A3, Stand 139-238

New: Memthane®, for industrial high-strength wastewater

Memthane®, Veolia’s Anaerobic Membrane Bio-Reactor (AnMBR), delivers high-energy efficiency and superb quality effluents, enabling wastewater treatment system cli-ents to simultaneously save money and improve their environmental performance.

Memthane® opens the door to treat-ing high strength, high solid wastes found in industries such as distill-eries, dairies (whey), bio-ethanol producers and instant coffee plants which were previously considered untreatable from an economic standpoint. Memthane® is not just an Anaerobic MBR technology, but a small footprint solution that offers an array of benefits, eliminating dis-posal costs while generating valuable biogas and remaining easy to operate and maintain.

Memthane® maxi-mizes renewable energy production while producing superb quality ef-fluent that can be discharged directly to the sewer or of-ten easily reused. The suspended free effluent can also facilitate easy recovery of nutri-ents for fertilizer production. With a COD removal efficiency of >98%, this powerful green energy source offers the possibility of making produc-tion plants energy self-sufficient, reducing the dependency on costly external fossil fuels.

An innovative yet simple processMemthane® combines two tech-nologies with proven track records:

Biothane’s anaerobic biological wastewater treatment and a Pen-tair’s X-Flow Ultra Filtration mem-brane separation process. Influent is fed to the anaerobic bioreactor where the organic components are converted into energy-rich biogas. Next, the anaerobic effluent is pro-cessed through the UF membrane unit, separating the ‘clean’ permeate from the biomass. The biomass is

returned to the bioreactor, while the ultra-clean filtrate is discharged as particle-free, low BOD/COD effluent, often at levels low enough for di-rect discharge to the sewer.

In addition to its performance a d v a n t a g e s , Memthane® de-livers significant total operating costs reduc-tion compared

with other technologies, taking into account all elements, includ-ing membranes, chemicals, sludge disposal and overall energy savings. The simple, single, fully automated reactor system also offers the pos-sibility of remote control.

www.veoliawaterst.com

Production of bioplastics from sludge

Research has shown that some bac-teria used to purify wastewater in biological treatment processes feed off carbon, which they can convert into biopolymers, similar to those produced by the chemical industry. Cella™, a technology developed by Veolia Water Solutions & Tech-

nologies’ subsidiary AnoxKaldnes, makes it possible to augment the biopolymer production potential of these biological treatment pro-cesses by creating the best possible conditions for selection of the right bacteria. The PHA-rich biomass is then harvested and converted into a valuable material for plastic and chemical industries used, for instance, to manufacture biobased consumer products and chemicals.

The Aquiris North Brussels sanitation site was chosen for the implementa-tion of the first prototype testing to recover organic matter from munici-pal wastewater for conversion into valuable end-products. It provides for an ideal facility to implement the biopolymer production trial as well as establish a development centre of resource recovery. With a capac-ity of an equivalent population of 1,100,000, the plant brings together

state-of-the art technologies for both the wastewater and sludge manage-ment.

In Sweden, a similar ”sister” proto-type is in operation for industrial wastewater treatment as well as a first biopolymer recovery prototype.

In the fall of 2011, the first bio-polymers were produced by the prototypes in Belgium and Sweden, where various components were fully incorporated into existing fa-cilities without any modification of operating processes. Leveraging on this initial success, the development teams in Lund, Brussels and Paris are now working to fine-tune the pro-cess and optimize the raw-product characteristics to ensure that they match the requirements of potential industrial partners and eventual bio-plastic and other biobased carbon product end-users.

Zero pollution, 100% respon-sibility

Building a new city-center waste-water treatment plant to meet the growing needs of the population, comply with European standards and cater for sustainable develop-ment issues was the challenge set to Veolia Water by Marquette-lez-Lille, in northern France. The plant will generate a low carbon footprint and produce biogas. It will meet the requirements of the European Directive on the good ecological status of water as early as 2013. It will be integrated into the landscape by architects, including a 7 hectare park and will focus on reducing noise and odor pollution.

The plant will have the capacity to treat wastewater from an equivalent population of 620,000. It will fea-ture two separate treatment trains, one for wastewater (2.8 m3/s) and one for stormwater (5.3 m3/s). The stormwater will be treated in the pat-ented Actiflo® ballasted flocculation process, while the wastewater will successively be treated by:

•Multiflo®, a lamellar settler used as primary treatment for suspended solids removal

•Hybas™, a biological treatment hybrid technology combining the best of two well-known tech-nologies: activated sludge and AnoxKaldnes MBBR

•Hydrotech Discfilters™, used as tertiary treatment to polish the effluent

• For sludge treatment, the imple-mentation of Exelys™, a new thermal hydrolysis process from Veolia, will reduce the quantity of sludge produced by 20–40% and increase the production of biogas by 15–30% compared to a standard digestion. After being dried in a BioCon™ dryer and stored, half of the sludge will be used in agriculture and the other half in a cement works.

As the Marquette-lez-Lille plant is located in a densely populated urban area, particular care has also been taken in dealing with odors. Veolia Water’s offer includes full control over odor emissions, their treatment and monitoring.

“The valuable methane-rich biogas produced can cover a significant part of the production plant’s energy and heat demand, as high as 100% in distilleries, for example. ”

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page 2 IFAT 2012 Edition

Soft, uranium-free drinking waterThe largest Uranex™ plant so far for removing uranium, and one of the largest Carix™ plants for partial desalination, is in operation in the waterworks in Windesheim, Rhine-land Palatinate, by the Trollmühle association.

The geologically-related uranium content of the water is now re-duced with the aid of these two ion exchange processes, from an average 14 μg/l to less than 0.1 μg/l. In addi-tion, the overall hardness is reduced from 22° to 12° and the nitrate con-tent from 35 mg/l to less than 25 mg/l. About 42,000 people in 14,000 households in the local area are sup-plied with 2.1 million cubic metres of drinking water a year. The plant was realised by Krüger WABAG, a subsidiary of Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies.

Building work began in August 2010 and the plant was commissioned in October 2011, after only 14 months’ construction time. The planned build-ing time and costs were both strictly adhered to. The moderate increase in water costs for the households is offset by the absence of decentral water softeners and the lower use of detergents and descalers that are harmful to the environment. In addition, the increased demands on the water quality and public health care are taken into account. Finally, compliance with the revised German drinking water regulation in force since November 2011 with a limit of 10μg/l uranium is ensured.

www.krueger-wabag.de

The power of sludgeSludge? Beautiful? Check the dictionary and you’ll find such unflattering descriptors as, “mire,” “muck,” “ooze” and “slush.” Search for synonyms and it only gets worse: “guck (or gook),” “slime,” “slop” and “mud.”

But efforts in recent years to improve the sustainability of the wastewa-ter treatment plants that produce sludge is giving rise to a new vocabu-lary; words like, “fuel,” “bio-solid,” “energy,” “green,” “renewable” and, particularly resonant in these times, “economical.”

As municipalities and industrial companies look for new ways to manage increasing waste volumes and control the costs from their wastewater treatment processes, the image of the once-lowly sludge is ascending. Increasingly sludge is being viewed and treated as a source of valuable by-products and agriculturally beneficial ingredients, such as phosphorus extracted from struvite. For many sites, however, the real pay-off comes in the capacity to recover energy. Proven technologies such as anaerobic digestion, thermal hydrolysis, co-digestion or thermal drying are converting sludge/biosol-ids into a valuable energy source.

Veolia Water Solutions & Technolo-gies has long regarded sludge not as a waste but as a resource from which to extract value for the benefit of customers. Veolia applies an array of technologies to custom-design value creating solutions for customers around the world, including:

• In Hilleroed, Denmark, the Exelys™ thermal hydrolysis solution, combined with anaerobic diges-tion maximizes biogas and green energy production, while mini-mizing sludge volumes. Thermal hydrolysis uses heat and pressure to break down sewage sludge prior to treatment by anaerobic diges-tion. This considerably increases the biogas yield and reduces the quantity of sludge for final dispos-al. Biogas production is increased by as much as 40% and sludge quantities are reduced up to 35%. Local subsidy premiums for green energy also make it possible to sell

excess energy for cogeneration. The Exelys™ process will also be installed at Marquette-Lez-Lille and Versailles, in France.

•Another leading thermal hydrolysis technology, Biothelys™ is being applied to increasingly large projects, including at the Esholt Wastewater Treatment Works in the UK. The biogas generated from the process will be used to run a seven megawatt combined heat and power plant. The digested sludge that is generated can be ap-plied as a fertilizer/soil conditioner for all crops including cereals, vegetables and salads as well as for horticultural applications.

•Applying the BioCon® low-temperature sludge thermal drying process allowed the mu-nicipality of Buffalo, Minnesota, to do much more than simply reducing the biosolids mass from its wastewater treatment plant, by 95%; it also resulted in 70-80% savings of the plant’s thermal energy requirements, helping reduce operating costs by 50% (compared to disposal of wet sludge). In addition to generating inexpensive renewable energy, the remaining biosolids are ready for land application. Expressly designed for drying of dewatered sludge from municipal and indus-trial wastewater treatment plants, the solution utilizes a dual-belt low temperature dryer operating with a temperature range between

80°C - 180°C, reducing the portion of water content in the material to less than 10%.

•The Pyrofluid™ thermal treatment solution oxidizes organic matter contained within sewage sludge in France, Poland and Russia amongst other countries. The solu-tion reduces volumes while it can also generate energy at plants. At Marne-Aval in France, for example, steam from two Pyrofluid™ furnac-es feed an electricity-generating turbine, contributing to meeting the plant’s energy needs.

Veolia’s sludge/biosolids expertise doesn’t stop with energy recovery solutions: “we are constantly look-ing for new ways to derive value and produce materials that are recyclable or reusable. In Brussels, Belgium, for example, we inaugurated a world-unique bio-refinery prototype capable of recovering the compo-nents from sanitation plants and vaporizing them into bio-plastics, usable in certain industries”, explains Jean-Marc Philipot, Technical Depart-ment Deputy Manager. Veolia also provides advanced control technolo-gies to optimize the environmental and energy performance of facilities; combined with anaerobic digestion, the result is energy neutral wastewa-ter treatment plants…today!

www.veoliawaterst.com

Global leader in water treatment

Serving municipal and industrial clients worldwide through a network of 135 business units, Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies:

•delivers engineering and turnkey design & build projects

•provides client-tailored water treatment solutions and associ-ated services

Services: what we deliver

We provide customized best-in-class water treatment service through our expertise and 250 market-leading technologies.

Our worldwide network of local busi-ness units and specialized knowledge produces added-value service solu-tions tailored to the unique needs of each client.

Value: what we create

We’re experts at reusing, recycling and leveraging value from water for clients.

We apply a portfolio of cutting-edge technologies to:

• treat and reuse wastewater

•produce and recover energy

•extract raw materials

• create valuable byproducts

Responsibility: at the heart of ev-erything we do

We know that our performance depends on the creativity and com-mitment of our more than 10,700 employees. Our teams deliver the water treatment solutions that im-prove quality of life in communities around the world.

Our sustainable carbon and water footprint initiatives help clients re-spond to stakeholder expectations to reduce environmental and resource impacts.

Clients and host communities trust us to ensure safety and meet the most stringent performance standards.

Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies is a fully-owned subsidiary of Veolia Water, the global benchmark for water services.

www.veoliawaterst.com

“€2.3 billion revenue in 2011,

10,767 employees worldwide”

“Ensured compliance with the revised German drinking water regulation in force since November 2011 with a limit of 10μg/l uranium”

Exelys™ energy-efficient thermal hydrolysisBiosolids are the largest potential energy source for a wastewater treatment facility, and therefore need to be utilized as effectively and efficiently as possible. Enhanced anaerobic digestion is now the performance benchmark for biogas production, with thermal sludge hydrolysis being recognized as the most effective pre-treatment.

However, traditional batch thermal hydrolysis systems are somewhat energy and capital cost intensive. A truly continuous thermal hydrolysis system, Exelys™ has been developed to overcome these shortcomings while maintaining a high level of effectiveness.

Exelys™ is a simple process: de-watered sludge with a high solids concentration (± 25%, which can be obtained from a conventional dewatering system) is continuously pumped under pressure into the reactor tube. Steam is injected into the sludge, where it condenses and heats the sludge. The sludge flows in a plug-like manner through the reactor tube at a temperature of 165° Celsius and 8 bar pressure with a retention time of at least 30 minutes. This provides the condi-tions required to hydrolyse the biological sludge and significantly

Hall A3, Stand 139-238 page 3

Water reuse and energy recovery in France

The Petite Californie wastewater treatment plant, located in Nantes (Northwest of France) was recently upgraded to treat 71,000 m3/day of wastewater, equivalent to 180,000 inhabitants. The upgrade and exten-sion of the plant not only improved the quality of the treated wastewater which is mainly discharged to the Loire River, but also allowed the plant to meet stringent requirements for sustainable development with regards to water reuse and energy recovery.

The city of Nantes takes a keen inter-est in sustainable development and opted for an overall energy efficiency approach which includes biogas pro-duction from mesophilic treatemnt of the sludge in the plant’s digest-ers. Flexible solar panels have also been installed at the plant. In total this covers one third of the power consumption at the wastewater treatment plant, i.e. the energy used for lighting and heating.

The residual sludge (12,500 T./year) is recovered for agricultural use after treatment by digestion, a technology which reduces volumes by over 30%, thus minimizing the environmental impact of transportation.

The upgrade of the wastewater treat-ment processes includes Veolia’s patented Multiflo™ and Biostyr®

processes, selected on the basis of their high technical performance, as well as compactness. The treated wastewater is used on-site for clean-ing activities and could eventually be suitable for use at the nearby bus washing station.

Despite having almost doubled its capacity, the plant’s surface has been reduced by half and the vacant area has been converted into gardens. The architecture of the premises, of a bioclimatic type, combines mineral and vegetal elements, with the cre-ation of gardens inside the building.

Fully covered, the plant is also characterized by a minimization of the sounds and olfactory nuisances. A permanent network of Odowatch™ electronic noses, capable of detecting 64,000 volatile olfactory elements, was installed and enables to mitigate the inconvenience of the odors.

increase the biogas potential of this fraction of the solids going to the anaerobic digesters. At the end of the reactor tube, the hydrolysate is cooled down, first through a heat exchanger (with heat recovery) and finally by water addition, to reduce its temperature and solids content so that it can be added directly to the anaerobic digestion process.

Due to the continuous operation, high solids content of the feed and an effective control system, the Exelys™ thermal hydrolysis process consumes considerably less energy per unit of solids hydrolysed compared to traditional batch systems, while achieving at least the same level of performance. Downstream, there are less solids requiring disposal, leading to lower costs. Exelys™ is a modular system and therefore is very flexible, yet at the same time capital and maintenance costs are reduced. The high temperature and pressures in the reactor tube also produce a sludge hydrolysate that is truly pasteurized.

Through its innovative design and continuous operational configura-tion, Exelys™ is the most energy-efficient technology available for thermal sludge hydrolysis. And due to the unique characteristics of the hydrolysed sludge product, Exelys™ is the ideal solution for significant increase of the capacity of the exist-ing digestion systems.

www.veoliawaterst.com/exelys

“The Exelys™ thermal hydrolysis process consumes considerably less energy per unit of solids hydrolysed compared to traditional batch systems, while achieving at least the same level of performance”

Roche uses energy from wastewaterThe pharmaceutical company Roche Diagnostics has built a new anaerobic plant for the biological pre-treatment of a partial wastewater flow at the Penzberg site in Upper Bavaria. The plant, which produces energy-rich biogas, supplements an existing membrane bioreactor system. The new anaerobic plant was built by Aquantis, a subsidiary of Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies.

The new system pre-treats partial wastewater flows especially rich in carbon as well as biologically degradable liquid waste from the bio-technological production. A 480 m3 Biobed® EGSB reactor (Expanded Granular Sludge Bed) is used for the biological treatment. In the course of this process energy-rich biogas is pro-duced, collected and processed. The gas is used in a combined heat and power plant to generate both forms of energy. The amount of electricity thus gained will cover more than 90 per cent of the energy requirements

of the wastewater treatment plant, and the thermal energy will be used to heat water that supplies a newly constructed local heating pipeline for replacing high energy steam. Further savings will be achieved by eliminat-ing the upstream aerobic high-load step. The carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced by about 1,400 metric tons per year, so that Roche Penzberg will achieve a sustainable reduction of its carbon footprint.

The Roche Penzberg plant, with a size of approximately 350,000 m², is one of the largest biotech centres in Europe and one of the leading biotechnology research, develop-ment and production centres of the Roche Group. Over 30 years of experience in biotechnological production make the Penzberg site a pioneer in the industrial applica-tion of biotechnology. Today, ap-proximately 4,800 people work on site. In addition, the Penzberg facility is the only international centre for

the development and production of both diagnostics and pharmaceuti-cals. Thus the Group’s Personalised Healthcare strategy is part of daily business in Penzberg. Test develop-ment for patient stratification and research support work hand in hand with the pharmaceutical scientists to develop products with clear benefit for patients. The goal is to deliver di-agnostics and medicines to improve patient’s health and quality of life.

www.vws-aquantis.com

“The amount of electricity thus gained will cover more than 90 per cent of the energy requirements of the wastewater treatment plant”

Reduce CAPEX and OPEX with newly designed digestersSludge is now more and more considered as a resource rather than a waste, so focus is big on sludge treatment and anaerobic digestion. Anaerobic digestion is a highly efficient and widely used method for green energy production and stabilizing of sludge. Digestion converts organic solids into biogas, significantly reducing the require-ment for sludge disposal, while at the same time improving its final dewaterability. The biogas produced can be utilized for heat and power production, while disposal costs for the sludge are significantly reduced. Therefore, anaerobic digestion is ef-ficient when it comes to reducing costs and generating income for a wastewater treatment plant.

In recent years, Veolia’s Danish subsidiary Krüger has developed a new design for digesters with the main purpose of reducing CAPEX and OPEX while improving the performance of the digester.

Key elements of the new design include:

•Construction with a flat roof and no headspace in the top concrete part of the digester which results in a significant reduction in CAPEX. The design simplifies the construc-tion and reduces the risk of corro-sion of internal digester surface in acidic gas headspace.

• Integrated gas cooler (Gas Top) that improves the gas quality, re-duces foam overflow and acts as a flame arrester.

•Built-in cleaning and maintenance possibilities, e.g. easy cleaning of blocked pipes, removal of sand and grit during operation, safe servicing of overhead mixer and no shut-down of the digester. All

these improvements increase the operational reliability and reduce OPEX.

The new design is making the civil construction easier and much cheaper.

The Gas Top is important to our commitment to Service, Value and Responsibility:

Service: Easy maintenance and foam removal Value: Very cost-effective system designed to avoid expensive maintenance Responsibility: Very safe workplace as gas leakages are prevented

www.kruger.dk

“The city of Nantes takes a keen interest in sustainable devel-opment and opted for an overall energy efficiency approach for its WWTP”

page 4 IFAT 2012 Edition

Largest hybrid desalination plant in the world

Fujairah 2 is the largest hybrid de-salination plant in the world, with a capacity equivalent to 591,000 m3/day of drinking water. The hybrid desalination plant is exceptional by its size but also because it combines the two technologies, Multiple Ef-fect Distillation (MED) and Reverse Osmosis (RO), to which is added a pretreatment Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) system. This state-of-the-art combination has proven to be a solu-tion which meets the requirement for a constant, high quality drinking water output, despite vast seasonal variations in the power output as well as algae bloom periods.

Hybrid desalination: the most energy-efficient solution to produce desalinated water

The desalination plant is linked to a 2,000 MW power plant. The high drinking water demand in UAE does not vary substantially with the sea-sons whereas the power demand does: during summer, the power demand is high due to the use of air-conditioning whilst it is lower dur-ing the winter months. Therefore, an innovative hybrid solution including MED and RO was called for to best match the demands from a cost as well as a performance perspective. The hybrid design is the most energy-efficient solution for production of desalinated water today.

The MED system composes the first section of the desalination plant and is the largest system of the two. It includes 12 MED units that

are driven using steam extracted from the three condensing steam turbines and from the exhaust of the back pressure steam turbine. This provides maximum output from the MED units during the summer. The second part of the desalination plant is based on RO and is driven by power rather than steam, therefore it can be operated independently of steam output and be used during winter to maintain water output when power demand is low.

Spidflow™: a new generation of rapid flotation

Algae bloom periods are often a problem in the region. Taking this into account, the technical solution put into place also features an in-novative pretreatment solution upstream of the RO system: Veolia’s Spidflow™ Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF). Clarification of water contain-ing low density particles is a delicate step, especially during episodes of fast algae bloom. Spidflow™ spe-cifically fits seawater desalination pre-treatment, as an upstream step of a Reverse Osmosis membrane treatment chain. It is especially ef-ficient during red tide periods and provides unequalled water treat-ment efficiency by eliminating over 99% of algae content. The efficiency was confirmed during a strong al-gae bloom in February 2011, when Fujairah 2 was able to maintain its daily production capacity while other plants in the region were forced to shut down or greatly reduce their production.

Treating highly contaminated waters at Fukushima Two and a half months: that’s the record time it took the AREVA and Veolia Water teams to design, de-liver and start up a system able to treat the contaminated water at the Fukushima nuclear power plant dam-aged by the March 2011 tsunami. The decontaminated water is then desalinated and reused to cool the plant’s reactors.

With a capacity of reducing water radioactivity by a factor of 10,000

and treating up to 50 tons of con-taminated water an hour, the system has played an essential role in sta-bilizing the situation of the nuclear plant by improving the access of workers to strategic parts of the site, and allowing TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) to re-circulate the waters that are used for cooling the reactors.

At the heart of the solution put forward by Veolia and AREVA was

Actiflo™-Rad, a system which com-bines Veolia’s proven Actiflo® and Multiflo™ technologies with AREVA’s radioactivity adsorption reagent. AREVA’s decontamination reagent captures the radiation and the Multi-flo™ and Actiflo® processes separate the “activated” reagents from the water by concentrating them into a quantity of thickened sludge which represents less than 1% of the initial volume of water. The residual sludge with a high radioactivity concentra-

tion is extracted and fed into a concrete underground pit while the water passes through a complete desalination and evaporation pro-cess made up of three EVALED™ TC evaporators. The desalinated water is reused in the reactor cooling circuit while the condensate is stored onsite in metal tanks.

The Actiflo™-Rad system can treat up to 50 m3/hour of contaminated water. It has been a key element

in TEPCO’s system which probably avoided the release of 40,000 to 50,000 m3 of contaminated water into the sea.

Manage water supplies more efficiently

Veolia Water created the Water Impact Index as an innovative and comprehensive water foot-printing tool designed to help decision-makers achieve sustainable water management.

Current sophisticated water foot-prints focus almost exclusively on volume – a very good indicator to raise awareness but not sufficient to represent the impact on a water resource. The Water Impact Index expands on existing volume-based water measurement tools by incor-porating multiple factors such as volume, resource stress and water quality. It examines the impact of human activity on water resources and provides a methodology for establishing positive and negative implications of how water resources are managed. The new tool provides

additional parameters needed to make informed choices about ef-fective water management.

Through the Water Impact Index, decision makers can factor in three essential elements – quantity of water used, level of stress upon water resources, and overall water quality – and develop a much more detailed, holistic and inter-related understanding.

The Water Impact Index considers both direct and indirect influ-ences of an activity from “cradle to grave”– whether managing a textile production facility or a wastewater treatment facility. It incorporates the volume and quality of the water extracted and released back into the environment and adds the Water Stress Index (which accounts for the

level of stress on the resource). This new index gives us the water impact – and it includes indirect elements from the production chain such as energy, raw materials, chemicals, and waste generated. Through the Water Impact Index, one can better evaluate how water users (humans and ecosystems) could be deprived of water resources through misman-agement of water or wastewater systems.

Tested for the first time in 2010 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s metropoli-tan area water cycle (in the United States), the Water Impact Index, combined with a total carbon foot-print analysis, enabled the identifica-tion of several levers for improving the system’s performance while reducing its impact. In 2011, many more projects were set up, includ-ing the optimization of wastewater treatment of the L’Oréal factory at Jiangsu, China where the tool highlighted the benefits in terms of carbon and water footprints of the wastewater treatment plant’s biological treatment.

Zero liquid discharge at Shell’s GTL complex in QatarPearl GTL, located in north-east Qatar, is the world’s largest Gas-To-Liquid complex with an impressive size similar to that of 450 football fields. It includes upstream gas pro-duction facilities and an onshore GTL plant that produces 140,000 barrels per day of GTL products and approxi-mately 120,000 barrels per day of condensate, liquefied petroleum gas and ethane.

The design-build of the Pearl GTL complex effluent treatment plant was conducted by a consortium formed from a 50/50 joint venture

between Veolia Water and Saïpem and a local construction company, Al Jaber.

Due to the size of the operation and the water scarcity in the region, Qatar Petroleum and Shell opted for a sustainable water management solution, e.g. zero liquid discharge, with the water produced in the transition from gas to liquid being led to an effluent treatment plant, where it is treated and reused in the production process. The efflu-ent treatment plant has a capacity to handle 45,000m3/day.

Veolia Water designed and com-pleted the effluent treatment plant, supported by patented Veolia tech-nologies. In particular, wastewater will be treated by ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis, with the objective of their complete reuse within the factory process. Thus, no liquid efflu-ent will be discharged into the natu-ral environment. Reverse osmosis brine treatment will be carried out by evaporation and crystallization, a technology achieving zero liquid discharge where only salt crystals are produced.

“The Water Impact Index expands on existing volume-based water measurement tools by incorporating multiple factors such as volume, resource stress and water quality. ”

Hall A3, Stand 139-238 page 5

Innovative water treatment on world’s first floating LNGThe largest floating facility ever built

Royal Dutch Shell plc (Shell) has opted for the Macro Porous Polymer Extraction (MPPE) technology for the Prelude FLNG-project (Floating Liquefied Natural Gas) in Australia, the first floating LNG plant. The MPPE unit will be used to treat the produced water of this floating structure, the largest in the world (488 meter length, 74 meter wide).

During the production of natural gas, formation and dehydration, water is “co-produced”. This produced water contains dissolved and dispersed aromatic, aliphatic and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Veolia’s MPPE water treatment technology is the only

compact technology that can achieve Shell’s ambitious environmental goal to go for zero discharge of en-vironmentally harmful substances.

The Prelude FLNG project is the first Australian upstream project with Shell as operator. Together with Technip and Samsung, who form the consortium which was awarded the construction project, Shell’s ambition is to develop more FLNG projects in the world. The FLNG technology is an important development as it reduces both the project costs and environmental footprint of an LNG development.

Veolia’s subsidiary VWS MPP Systems has extensive worldwide expertise in the development, mar-keting and servicing of separation systems for wastewater, offshore produced water, process water and groundwater streams.

With its robust and flexible operation and growing range of applications, the MPPE system has proven to be the ideal solution to aim at zero harmful discharge by removing toxic, dissolved and dispersed hydrocar-bons.

www.vwsmppsystems.com

Water reuse plant in Australian office building

The Darling Quarter development is a $500 million low rise commercial office and leisure space in Sydney’s Darling Harbour. Significant sustain-ability initiatives were put in place, including a reduction in potable water consumption of 92% through

rainwater harvesting and onsite wastewater recycling. The project was awarded a 6-Star Green Star Office Design rating by the Green Building Council of Australia.

The Darling Quarter Recycled Water Plant combines leading-edge biologi-cal and membrane processes by Veo-lia Water Solutions & Technologies, including the AnoxKaldnes™ MBBR (Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor) and the hollow fibre Ultrafiltration mem-brane (UF) to remove very efficiently bacteria, suspended solids and BOD / COD, followed by Reverse Osmosis to remove salts and particles larger than 0.0001 µm and Ultraviolet and Chlorination to kill bacteria, protozoa and viruses. The plant produces 166 kL/day (60 ML/year) of high quality treated water which is used for toilet flushing, garden irrigation and cool-ing tower make up.

The treatment plant was designed by Veolia to be a completely closed plant, with all waste streams (screenings, sludge and brine) be-ing combined and sent directly to the sewer. Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies was the first company to get permission from the local

water utility to discharge screenings directly back to sewer. As one of the first inner city treatment plants, Darling Quarter benefits from an innovative and efficient odor extrac-tion and treatment system, designed by Veolia and residential developer Lend Lease through a collaborative approach from the early stages of the project. This has now created a benchmark for future city treatment plants.

By using innovative and highly efficient technologies with small footprints, Veolia was able to deliver a treatment plant which is approxi-mately 25% smaller than those of competitors, saving valuable space for the building owner to use to earn additional income over the life of the building.

Long-term onsite trials have been performed over the past six months to optimize the plant’s operations by reducing energy, chemicals and waste consumption with successful preliminary results: energy con-sumption has already been signifi-cantly reduced.

www.veoliawaterst.com.au

“The MPPE system has proven to be the ideal solution to aim at zero harmful discharge by removing toxic, dissolved and dispersed hydrocarbons”

“Designed with sustainability principles in mind, the Recycled Water Plant helps to reduce the environmental footprint of the overall project, as it eliminates the need to transport large volumes of water to and from centralised wastewater treatment plants. Through continued innovation in design and operating principles, it also reduces carbon footprint compared to alternative treatment systems.”

Emergency mobile drinking water systemsEight water treatment systems have been developed for the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) by Berkefeld, a Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies subsidiary. The THW water treatment specialist teams are equipped with the type TWA 15 UF transportable systems. The modular, highly-mobile water systems encompass various state-of-the-art technologies which can be combined with each other depend-ing on the water quality available in the emergency area.

The plants provide the agency with a Germany-wide network of water treatment facilities which also fulfil the German Drinking Water Regula-tions. This means that the plants are approved not only for disaster relief worldwide but also for emer-gency municipal water supply in Germany. The THW thereby offers itself as a partner to the German drinking water suppliers for planned or unforeseen cases of temporary emergency supply.

Depending on the combination of the process steps, a TWA 15 UF system provides up to 15m3/hour of clean drinking water to supply up to about 2,400 inhabitants if the water

is fed into the grid, or about 18,000 if it is distributed in canisters.

The plant’s core component is a highly-effective CeraMem® ceramic ultrafiltration membrane with a pore width of 0.1 μm by which viruses and germs are reliably removed from the water. The ceramic membrane is structured as a monolith block and therefore is especially stable. In ad-dition, disinfection with ultraviolet light and chlorination ensures a safe drinking water quality. Upstream are a coagulation and adsorption unit as well as pre-filtration with auto-matically back-washable discfilters. The system also includes a storage unit for 40m3 of drinking water and a distribution and sludge disposal module.

Due to the modular concept, these water treatment plants can be transported to the action site in com-mercial aircraft and trucks, erected without great effort and quickly put into operation. The predominantly automatic control and the reduced need for chemicals ease the efforts of the aid workers on-site.

www.berkefeld.de

page 6 IFAT 2012 Edition

Three awards to Swedish wastewater treatment plantA 1999 joint EU-decision limiting ef-fluent nitrogen from large municipal wastewater treatment plants to 10 mg/l led to the construction of an AnoxKaldnes™ MBBR (Moving Bed Biological Reactor) for post-denitri-fication at the RYA wastewater treat-ment plant in Göteborg, Sweden. Furthermore, in 2006, the county administrative board decided upon new discharge limits for phospho-rous with 0.3 mg/l as guide value. In practice, this meant that biomass separation from the planned MBBR plant as well as tertiary filtration of the secondary effluent were needed. After extensive pilot testing, these functions were combined in the Discfilter plant.

The RYA wastewater treatment plant, one of the largest in Scandinavia, serves the equivalent population of about 650,000. After screening, grit removal and primary clarification, water is treated in the activated sludge plant with possibilities for pre-denitrification and simultane-ous precipitation. Trickling filters are used for nitrification and the newly installed MBBR for nitrogen removal in a post-denitrification process. Wa-ter is finally treated in the Discfilter plant before being released into the recipient.

The Hydrotech™ Discfilter was selected for biomass separation from the new post-denitrifying AnoxKaldnes™ MBBR and for effluent polishing following the existing activated sludge system, with both functions combined in the same plant. 32 HSF2220-2F units with a pore opening of 15 µm were installed, each with a design flow capacity of 900m3/hour.

The focus has been for a sound and safe work environment. Odor has been eliminated through separate

ventilation from each filter and noise reduced to a minimum by specially designed filter covers. Stable opera-tion is ensured by a centralised, self-cleaning backwash system, on-line control of filtration performance and an automatized system for acid wash of the filter panels. During the first year of operation less than 1 ‰ of the filter panels were exchanged.

In 2010, the architectural design of the discfilter building was recognized with the prestigious Kasper Salin

prize and in 2011, the innovative steel construction of the same build-ing was awarded a prize. Not only the innovative design but also the func-tion has been acknowledged: Gryaab was awarded the yearly prize of the Swedish Water Association plant upgrade for the improved nutrient removal following the plant upgrade with the AnoxKaldnes™ MBBR and the Discfilter processes.

www.hydrotech.se

Heavy metal removal without sludge generationIt has long been recognised that adsorption processes are capable of reducing the amount of many metals in water and wastewater to a very low level. Krüger’s patented MetClean™ technology utilises the adsorption process in a fluidised bed reactor to remove a range of metals from solutions. Krüger’s experience includes As and the following metals: Cd, Cr, Hg, Mo, Ni, Se, Zn, Cu, V, Ba and Sr. Treatment efficiency is as high as 99% in a one-step process.

By using MetClean™, the weight of the waste product is reduced by up to 20 times. The waste product result-ing from the treatment is a granule with a dry solids content of 80-90%. The savings in waste disposal costs will normally be sufficient to finance the capital and operating costs for a MetClean™ plant. The footprint of the MetClean™ process is relatively small, making it a very cost-effective solution for several applications:

•Potable water contaminated by arsenic or nickel.

•Groundwater contamination due to leaching of metals such as Cr is easily eliminated by using a dedicated fluidised bed reactor.

• Industrial wastewater from metal treatment industries, wood preservation, tanning etc. containing the metals already mentioned.

• Flue gas desulphurisat ion wastewater from power plants. MetClean™ is highly suited for this heavily contaminated wastewater and offers a substantial reduction in treatment and waste disposal costs. In fact, MetClean™ is capable of treating a range of metals to lower ppb levels than can be achieved in a traditional precipitation plant. In this application, the elimination of the sludge problem is a very obvious advantage.

www.kruger.dk

“With careful process control and efficient tertiary filtration, the new discharge limits of 0.3 mg/l in effluent total phosphorous can be achieved without post-precipitation. In practice, this means that the effluent Suspended Solids concentration is typically maintained below 5 mg/l.”

Reduced carbon footprint with CARIX® With the selection of the appropri-ate process technologies and the design of water treatment plants, the assessment of associated CO2-emissions becomes more and more important with many investment decisions worldwide. Krüger WA-BAG, a subsidiary of Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies, has there-fore analysed the carbon footprints of different processes for softening of drinking water: the CARIX® ion-exchange process, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis.

The carbon footprint represents the total of greenhouse gas emis-sions, caused directly or indirectly by a technology. Thanks to the total carbon footprint assessment, we are in the position to determine different solutions for water treatment and indicate possible savings with the associated costs.

The assessment

The survey carried out is based on the values of a CARIX® unit being in operation with the actual operating costs and consumptions. This unit is compared with a nanofiltration unit and a reverse osmosis unit. A common index is the CO2 equivalents (g CO2/m3 product water) being gen-erated during the entire lifecycle. For all three cases, an average lifecycle of 25 years was taken as a basis. The basic output of each plant is 244 m3 of water per hour. The total emis-sions are divided into three main categories:

•Emissions being generated during the operation of the unit (raw water supply, electric power consumption and operating materials)

•Emissions being generated during engineering and construction of the unit

•Emissions being avoided due to the CO2 consumption.

The results

With 161g CO2-e/m3, the CARIX® unit has the lowest carbon footprint, which is a result of the comparatively low electric power consumption and the reduction of emissions by the CO2 being bound in the wastewater. Compared with the CARIX® unit, the carbon footprint of the nanofiltra-tion and reverse osmosis units were higher by 68% (NF) and 88% (RO).

Key findings from the investigation:

•With all three units, the biggest share of emissions comes from the electric power consumption during plant operation.

•The category raw water supply during operation registers emis-sions connected with the energy consumption due to generation of additional raw water.

•The emissions resulting during plant engineering and construc-tion, as well as emissions resulting from the production of the oper-ating materials, only represent a small share of the total emissions.

•The “avoided emissions” are the share of greenhouse gases being bound through the CARIX® process and prevented from passing into the atmosphere.

www.krueger-wabag.de

Granulate

Iron (II) or Manganese (II) ▼

Oxidationagent

▼ ▼ pH regulation

Water containing dissolved heavy metals

▼Clean water

“Savings in waste disposal costs will normally be sufficient to finance the capital and operating costs for a MetClean™ plant”

Hall A3, Stand 139-238 page 7

Dragon Mining improves efficiency of wastewater treatment

The Svartliden Gold Mine is located 700 km north of Stockholm in north-ern Sweden, and is operated by the Swedish subsidiary of Australian Dragon Mining. Ore from the Svar-tliden Gold Mine is extracted from an open-cast mine and treated in a con-ventional crushing and processing plant (CIL) with a capacity of 300,000 tons of ore per year. The wastewa-ter from the process is collected in a sand trap. 95% is recycled while nitrogen, arsenic and copper needs to be removed from the remainder before being discharged into a local stream.

In order to meet the specified discharge requirements, Veolia’s Swedish subsidiary VA Ingenjörerna suggested installing the MetClean™ treatment plant, the AnoxKaldnes™ MBBR process and Hydrotech™ Discfilters.

The MetClean™ process, an ad-sorption process for the removal of

heavy metals, will help Dragon Min-ing meet stringent environmental discharge limits by reducing Arsenic (As) from the goldmine water down to 15 ppb, Nickel (Ni) down to 45 ppb and Copper down to 9 ppb. The AnoxKaldnes™ MBBR (Moving Bed Biological Reactor) is used as a biological treatment for the removal of nitrogen. And finally, Hydrotech Discfilters™ are used for the removal of suspended solids produced in the biological treatment.

VA Ingenjörerna’s control program, VA-Operatör, ensures that daily op-erations run smoothly. Due to the construction of the plant, there are fewer costs associated with erection and operation. The construction also lends support to Dragon Mining’s desire to improve the efficiency of the management of wastewater at Svartliden.

www.vaing.se

Cost-effective solution to treat ammoniaWith the raising awareness on product recovery from wastewater treatment plants, sludge digestion for biogas production is now one of the key processes towards the energy producing wastewater treat-ment plant. However, sludge diges-tion typically means that centrates highly loaded in ammonia but very poor in carbon source are returned to the main wastewater treatment line, usually adding another 15% to the ammonia load of the plant.

ANITA™ Mox is a one-step energy-efficient MBBR process treating these centrates with little aeration and no need for external carbon source. The technology is based on the growth of ammonium oxidising bacteria and anammox bacteria as a biofilm on the protected surface of MBBR (Moving Bed Bio Reactor) carriers.

Besides the treatment of centrates from municipal sludge digestion, with or without sludge hydrolysis, ANITA™ Mox is also particularly well suited for the treatment of other streams with a very low C/N ratio such as:

• Leachate

• Industrial wastewater after anaerobic treatment (Food & Beverage industry, etc.)

• Industrial wastewater naturally highly loaded in nitrogen (Microelectronics industry, etc.)

•Reject water from sludge treatment platforms

The ANITA™ Mox process is being used successfully on centrates from Sjölunda (Malmö) and Sundets (Växjö) Wastewater Treatment Plants in Sweden. Despite the use of slow-growing anammox bacteria, the plants were started-up within 3-4 months to reach their maximum removal capacity of approximately 90% of NH4-N and 75-80% of TN.

www.veoliawaterst.com/anita

State-of-the-art online control of wastewater systemsSTAR Control® improves and up-dates the control of wastewater treatment plants on the basis of on-line measurement of ammonia, nitrate, phosphate, etc. It comprises advanced on-line control strategies for biological/chemical treatment which lead to savings in energy and chemical consumptions.

Another advantage of STAR Control® is stabilization and improvement of effluent quality through better utilization of the existing plant ca-pacity. The control tool can also be an alternative first step to increase the capacity of wastewater treat-ment plants in order to postpone or eliminate the need for expansions.

STAR Control® optimizes and controls the plant’s processes while the SCA-

DA system performs the conventional basic control of the plant operation such as alarm handling, supervision of operation of the mechanical plant parts, maintenance plans, etc. STAR Control® supplements the SCADA system, as it computes and transmits set points to the SCADA system. STAR Control® only performs the control through the SCADA system and when the control basis is in order.

The operation and reporting of STAR Control® are based on Internet tech-nology and a graphic user interface is accessed by network browser on LAN, ADSL or similar networks.

More recently, the STAR Control® system was expanded with a new module for real time control of sewer and wastewater treatment

plant. The system predicts flow from radar information and simple sewer models. The flow predictions, in combination with measurements of the system, state results in a full scale control of the sewer system and wastewater treatment plant.

www.kruger.dk

page 8 IFAT 2012 Edition

Service | Value | Responsibility

World leader in water reuse through a complete range of innovative solutions and technologies

• Hydrotech™Discfilters

• Actiflo®High-rateSandBallastedClarifiers

• Filtraflo™TGVRapidadvancedfiltrationandadsorption

• Biosep™membranesystems

• OPUS™OptimizedPretreatmentandUniqueSeparationprocess

Water is too valuable to be used only once

Veolia technologies provide more than

3.5 million m3 of reused wastewaterevery day

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