NWL conduct successful monitoring within Tyneside Wastewater System
The Tyneside Wastewater System is a large and varied sewer network operated by Northumbrian Water. Northumbrian Water were required to install permanent flow monitoring equipment at key locations within the network. The use of conventional intrusive Area Velocity (AV) flow meters was not appropriate, due to the difficult and varying flow conditions. EMS specified, installed and commissioned a number of non-contact flow monitoring systems at critical locations within the network providing NWL with accurate, reliable flow data.
The Client
Northumbrian Water Limited (NWL) are one of 10 regulated water and sewage companies in England and Wales. NWL operates in the north east of England, where it trades as Northumbrian Water, and in the south east of England, where it trades as Essex & Suffolk Water.
Northumbrian Water provides mains water and sewerage services across Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, Durham and parts of North Yorkshire to around 1.3 million properties.
Client Benefits
After working with EMS, Northumbrian Water now have a fully commissioned, accurate and robust flow monitoring solution in place at critical locations within the network. This provides good operational intelligence at a reduced whole life cost with significant operational expenditure advantages. Implementing this system has also significantly reduced the risk to Health and Safety to operational staff compared to using conventional intrusive AV flow meters within this environment.
The Challenges
The Tyneside Wastewater System is a large and varied sewer network operated by Northumbrian Water. Northumbrian Water were required to install permanent flow monitoring equipment at key locations within the network to improve their understanding of the hydraulic performance of the network and the impact on the receiving wastewater treatment works.
Dealing with flow from Newcastle and the surrounding area, rapid changes in flow conditions at peak times are frequent. Consequently, if conventional intrusive area velocity (AV) flow meters were to be used, they would have required regular maintenance to obtain good data quality in such conditions.
Regular maintenance of the intrusive AV meters would incur significant operational costs. It would also pose an increased Health and Safety risk to operators requiring confined space entry and short notice of increased flows coming through the system.
The Solution
EMS worked with key stakeholders including tier 1 supplier ESH-MWH , tier 2 supplier Retroflo and Northumbrian Water and performed a detailed requirements capture. Pre-site inspections of the proposed monitoring locations were carried out and these were approved depending on the suitability of the proposed monitoring technology and the applicability of the monitoring location.
The result of this investigatory stage was that EMS specified a non-contact Doppler-based monitoring solution that incorporated the Hach Flo-Station, non-contact area velocity Flo-Dar and surcharge velocity sensor.
Using the Flo-Dar and Flo-Station meant that the solution was fully ATEX compliant, required very little in the way of maintenance and calibration and provide reliable, accurate flow monitoring in a wide variety of flow conditions within a challenging monitoring environment.
