Recent changes in the detailed design procedures for wastewater treatment plants over the last ten years have resulted in increasing input from operations staff.  Formal inclusion of operational input includes HAZOP’s for most projects, workshops and endorsement procedures for alliances and HACCP for plant monitoring and optimisation.

In addition to the formal processes being adopted, there is also an enormous collective experience held by operations staff.  Operational staff have continuous exposure to performance and reliability of systems.  This exposure and experience is usually not available to designers and many suppliers.

Examples are presented of beneficial operational input to the above processes.  Further opportunities for operational input to the design process are then identified including process design, control and plant layout.

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Most of us are aware of the current national arrangements relating to training and what follows is a whistle stop tour of my experiences over the last twenty years of water/wastewater training in Queensland over that time. Also it is probably timely I think to ask some fundamental questions about where we have been, what have we learnt, and more importantly, is our current direction going to deliver the outcomes that we currently require.  But first let us remind ourselves what we have been trying to achieve through the Training Reform Agenda.

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Water is one of the most abundant materials we have on this planet but much of the quality is less than suitable for human consumption, or difficult to harness.  In our industry, it is most abundant as grey water to be upgraded or sewer water treated with the right technology to make it fit for human consumption.  To enhance water quality is paramount.

Coatings are used to assist in the retention of water quality, or protect the assets designed to handle the water.  These are often packaged into a single box and assessed on price, degree of preparation required before coating, or their ease of application.  Appreciation of use on the common substrates of steel and concrete in relation to potable and waste water is a basic necessity.

This paper reviews a small area of the current standards relating to the water industry and applies them to coating selection.  It is principally about retention of water quality and reviewing realistic selection criteria.

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Toowoomba City Council has recently completed a program to construct up to twenty bores to augment available water supplies. 100 hour bore pumping tests generate significant quantities of pumping test water.  Current drought conditions, with Level 5 water restrictions imposed, necessitated measures to prevent pumping test water going to “waste”.

An innovative and unique mobile system was developed to overcome this problem, by means of recovering bore pumping test water, chlorinating the recovered water and injecting it into the City’s water supply system in accordance with strict HACCP systems.  This adaptable, cost effective, yet simple system demonstrates a tangible response to the need for water conservation, particularly in drought conditions.

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Like many Queensland tourist areas, Hamilton Island must cater for a variable population of between 1,500 and up to 4,000 people.  Being privately owned and operated, there is a need to produce and continually supply high standard potable water whilst minimising operational costs.

The Island has a number of freshwater collection and storage dams but their capacity is not sufficient to supply water year round.  These storages are also susceptible to blue-green algal outbreaks and relatively high Electrical Conductivity (EC) due to evaporation and sea water ingress.  The Hamilton Island resort operates a DAFF water treatment plant and a Reverse Osmosis (RO) plant to treat sea water, as a back up during times of limited fresh water availability or when water quality issues require an alternative supply.  Unfortunately, the RO plant is expensive to operate and its use must be minimised.  Disinfection in the form of Chlorine gas and Ozonation is employed.

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A number (12) of powdered activated carbons (PAC) were jar tested in natural raw water containing a commercial spike of MIB and geosmin and their performance for reducing these compounds was evaluated. The PACs tested came from a variety of suppliers, raw materials, activation methods and countries including steam activated coal, wood and coconut; and chemically activated wood. Each of the carbons (except Acticarb PS1300) had the same iodine number (a measure of adsorption capacity) and were analysed under the same conditions including a 15 minute contact time. Of these carbons the Australian steam activated coal carbons, Acticarb PS1000 and PS1300 had the best removal efficiencies.

The Acticarb PS1300 was the only carbon with a higher iodine number, however this increase in adsorptive capacity for iodine was not proportional to the increase in adsorption for MIB and geosmin. For all of the PACs tested, the geosmin was more easily reduced than the MIB. Contact time, raw water character and PAC character all influenced the PAC’s ability to reduce MIB and geosmin.

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Anaerobic sludge digestion is an oft fundamental component of municipal sewage treatment, with operational management often proving both complex and labour-intensive for water authority and council-based entities.

Managers of the anaerobic digestion process units, which require significant capital investment to establish within a treatment facility, attempt to maximize the treatment capacity to the limits of design capabilities, often to the detriment of the biological process that drives the organic degradation.

Inadequate/deficient heating, operation outside favourable biologically viable conditions, re-commissioning following asset maintenance activity, poor sludge drying characteristics and poor and/or inconsistent gas production from process units are all design inadequacies or indicators of poor process unit performance.

Operational issues experienced in anaerobic sludge digestion are varied, with specific remedies often a combination of system optimisation and specialist product addition, with each application scenario requiring a concerted investigation prior to solution application.

The optimisation of established anaerobic sludge digestion process units is achievable, through the application of appropriate strategies designed to ensure both operational and managerial considerations are adequately addressed.

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Biological nutrient removal sewage treatment plants release biologically assimilated phosphorous from anaerobically digested sludge.  When this sludge is dewatered, a phosphate rich supernatant is obtained.  The current industry practice of diverting the supernatant to the head of the works significantly increases the phosphorous loading on the treatment process.

EGL operate the Redcliffe City Council WWTP, and use hydrated lime (Ca(OH)2) to treat phosphate via an existing lime slurry system.  EGL have been looking at alternatives to the use of lime as it represents an OH&S hazard and the dosing process had become operationally inefficient and costly to maintain.

This paper reports on the work that Virotec Global Solutions have undertaken with EGL to develop a formulation to treat phosphates, achieving a removal rate of 99.84% (from 500 mg/L to 0.8 mg/L).

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The Bundaberg City Council East Waste Water Treatment Plant has a procedure in place to convert the activated sludge continuous extended aeration plant into an instantaneous decant extended aeration (IDEA) plant as a contingency to allow the secondary sedimentation tank (SST) to be taken offline.

The paper provides an operations view of how the conversion takes place and the impacts on the combined plant. The programmed decant sequence was developed by Bundaberg City Council operational and trade services staff. The decant sequence along with plant operational results during the conversion explains the plant operations and its performance.

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Logan City Council installed pilot scale equipment to dry biosolids to reduce volume, weight, odours and to greatly reduce the cost of removal of biosolids.

The Cyclonic Thermal Dryer works the same way as a cyclone does in the way that it picks up the biosolids and the air flows around the biosolids at a rate of 300km/h+ which helps dry the biosolids. The main drying process is the T.P.C.(Tempest Product Conditioner) which heat up to 120 Celsius. Most of the bacteria are killed by collision and cell rupture.  The dryer can take the end product from the belt press at 14 to 16% solids and mix it with a dried product to bring it up to 30% then put it though the Cyclonic Thermal Dryer. The end product out of the dryer will have 60 to 90%+ of the moisture content removed. The Cyclonic Thermal Dryer gives us quality control of the end product by varying mix rates and temperatures.  Biosolids dried in this process are likely to be more successful as a soil conditioner for agricultural and landscaping applications because of the nature of the final product.  The Cyclonic Thermal Dryer is portable, compact and fast. It can be moved into areas that do not have power as it runs on diesel fuel.

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Ultraviolet (UV) light has become widely accepted as an alternative option for wastewater disinfection. There are now many wastewater treatment plants worldwide using UV technology with an increasing emphasis for reuse application.

Contra Shear Technology (CST) has recently been awarded the UV Disinfection equipment supply contract for the Goulburn Irrigation scheme. The contract was awarded to Ted Wilson and Sons Ltd (TWS) who submitted an innovative design that will operate as a pressurised on demand irrigation scheme simplifying infrastructure and provided the council with a more economic contract as well as significant savings in long term operating cost.

The UV Disinfection equipment selected was the Berson InLine Medium Pressure Lamp technology that is to be fully integrated into the overall PLC/SCADA process control system.

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Bundaberg City Council and Camreay Holdings have been working together to find a long term environmentally sustainable option for the re-use of biosolids. This paper examines the cradle to grave process of turning a waste product into a beneficial resource. The paper will be jointly presented by Keith Nicholle, Millbank Wastewater Treament Plant Operator and Graham Campbell, Proprietor Camreay Holdings. The first section of the paper will present the operators perspective of treatment processes and transportation of biosolids. The onsite composting process and potential for future developments and opportunities will be discussed by Camreay Holdings in the second section.

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Artificially increasing the fluoride content of drinking water to the optimal level of one part per million has been shown to significantly improves the dental health of the consuming population.

Water Fluoridation was introduced in Australia, in Beaconsfield, Tasmania in 1953, and currently Australia has over 60 water treatment plants  fluoridating, with a further 20 or so in the planning stages.  In Queensland, no large scale fluoridation occurs, with the exception of Townsville, and for thirty years  Brisbane has been the only capital city to forgo this public health initiative.

While water shortage issues continue to  plague most states including Queensland, in 2006 the state government set aside $6m to fund Water Fluoridation infrastructure, and set a time frame of 5 years for implementation at major population centres. This paper outlines the three products permitted to be used for water fluoridation in Australia, the unique characteristics of each, and from an operator perspective, the three products are analysed from the perspectives of safety and ease of use.

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For people to enjoy and maintain a healthy living standard, it is essential that environmental health infrastructure, such as water supply, sewerage and waste management systems and services are adequate. Inadequate essential services in remote Indigenous communities can underpin health status. It has been identified that the health status of Indigenous people is well below that of others living in Australia.

Recognising that improving a community’s general health and wellbeing can result from effective operations and maintenance of environmental health infrastructure, the Queensland Government established the Operations and Maintenance (Mainland) Program (O&M Program) specifically for water supply, sewerage and waste management systems.

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The Wetalla Wastewater Reclamation Facility (WWRF) is located at Toowoomba on Old Goombungee Road. The plant serves the entire City of Toowoomba, including a substantial industrial base supplying a large percentage of the biological load. Before the completion of the upgrade the site effectively comprised two separate treatment plants (Stage 3 and Stage 4), Stage 3 being a substantially modified trickling filter and activated sludge plant operated in an Activated Sludge (AS) configuration, and a newer Biological Nutrient Reduction (BNR) plant based on a variation of the Modified UCT configuration.

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Toowoomba City Council began the implementation of HACCP for Water Operations on the 20th of March 2001 and on the 23rd March 2004 obtained 3rd party certification from NCSI. This paper presents an Operator’s view of the process of implementation of HACCP in a water treatment plant. It will also discuss the implementation of HACCP for Catchment & Dams and Pumping and Distribution.

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