December 14, 2022
breakthrough-2 breakthrough-3 get-involved innovation water water-breakthrough-challenge water-quality winnersSafe, clean water is a must
Around the UK millions of customers rely on their water company to provide safe and clean water.
The quality of water in our taps is closely monitored in England and Wales – from the safety, to the smell and taste. Although drinking water quality of public supplies in England and Wales has been at a very high standard for a number of years, it needs constant innovation to keep those standards high and improve on them further.
Tap water contains naturally-occurring minerals and micro-organisms, some of which are harmless – or which can even support our health (such as fluoride which prevents tooth decay) – but others need to be managed or removed from the water before it reaches homes.
Science and technology have a huge role to play in enabling increasingly accurate detection of organisms and substances that shouldn’t be in our water, so that any problems can be successfully managed. This should give people increased confidence in the quality of what comes through their taps and encourage more people to drink tap water – benefitting customer pockets as well as the environment through reduced plastic waste.
Three projects, all winners of Ofwat’s second Water Breakthrough Challenge, are bringing new approaches to the water sector to help control and manage the quality of water in pipe networks.
All at an early stage, it’s hoped that these projects will shine a light on what’s going on in our pipes, and enable water companies to manage treatment processes and conduct remedial works more quickly and accurately.
Water companies need to maintain constant vigilance to ensure the water they supply is of the highest standards and safe to drink. The water industry has invested millions of pounds in real-time monitoring and control systems to ensure these safety standards are achieved. However, until recently, monitoring the microbiological quality of water has relied on manual tests that only pick up four indicator species, the presence of which may indicate poorly treated water. These tests can take up to two days to get the results.
This can cause a delay in detecting changes in water quality; and can make root cause analysis – how you find out why a problem occurred – difficult, if conditions change. To overcome this, water companies are now using techniques such as flow cytometry which accurately counts the number of bacteria in the water and can determine if they are dead or alive. This additional data enables the water industry to detect changes and relationships between the bacteriological water quality and other influencing factors such as temperature changes.
Although this is a major step forwards, there is one significant limitation, knowing the number of bacteria present does not provide information on which species of bacteria are present, or where they may have come from. The Tap Water Forensics project, from Severn Trent, aims to close this gap by using the latest advances in genetic sequencing. This technique can sample a large volume of water and identify all the bacterial species present and their relative abundance.
The project aims to refine this technique for use in the water industry and, with the support of four water companies and the Centre for Ecology Hydrology, will develop a library of 1,000 samples showing the bacterial species present at different stages of the treatment process under a range of circumstances e.g. different seasons. This data library can be used to determine if a sample contains the expected range of bacterial species, and if their relative abundance – how the proportion of bacterial species compare to each other – is normal.
Genetic sequencing generates a large amount of complex data. The project will develop data analytics models that will aim to automatically interpret these data and provide insights. For example, are bacteria that are routinely found in soil present at a point where they would normally have been removed? If so, this could indicate ingress into a treated water reservoir. The project will also determine if changes in the genomic sequencing data can also be detected in the visualisation of the flow cytometry counts – called a fingerprint. This will enable water companies to rapidly detect changes in the microbial community without the need to take further samples for genetic sequencing.
The project is at an early stage. Sampling is starting in December 2022 and will continue for a year to ensure that the team captures any seasonal fluctuations. The final output including data analytics models are due to be delivered in May 24.
This project builds on the UK’s expertise in genomics. Applying this to the water industry will enable companies to refine and improve the efficiency of treatment process whilst continuing to deliver safe drinking water to millions of customers.
Northumbrian Water is also looking at innovation for water quality through its project Water Quality As-A-Service Treatment-2-Tap. The project looks at how modern sensor technology can support better water quality.
Currently, water companies use sensor technology to monitor water quality in real time, day-in-day-out at the treatment works. But once the water leaves the treatment works and goes into the network via the pipes, service reservoir and network tanks, there’s nothing there except data on flow and pressure, until it reaches customer taps. If something does happen, perhaps causing discoloration or a taste and odour issue, water companies are reliant on customers telling them, and then they can investigate.
Water Quality As-A-Service Treatment-2-Tap is exploring how sensors can help to gain intelligence about how the network is operating. Close monitoring of the network could mean that water companies could identify when they need to proactively step in to change or intervene or alter the way the water is flowing, rather than relying on the customer as a barometer for performance.
Sensor technology is at a point now where it can realistically be deployed on the network at scale. The issue has always been how to power these things – what’s the battery life like? How sensitive would they be if they are placed in a remote location? The team is working in collaboration with Siemens who have identified the best kind of sensors to use. A previous study has collected data from 20 sensors embedded into a local network in Teeside; this new project will see this extended with another 30 sensors on the local distribution network. Having more detail should provide the team with a more holistic understanding of what happens to our water as it continues its journey towards our taps. The University of Sheffield will also assist with analysing the data produced.
Ultimately the team will be looking for how to preserve and maintain water quality for consumers. They also hope that by monitoring water quality alongside pressure transients in the network and artificial intelligence techniques, they can understand the relationship between water quality, burst mains and leakage to make changes that will help save money and reduce pollution.
Unlocking information about water quality could prove hugely beneficial for customers, and the team will be doing behavioural research with customers to understand how they want to engage with the data as its produced. As initial results from trials start to come in, the teams will be building detailed models that can demonstrate exactly how these scientific advances could help us make progress in water quality control, both in the UK and beyond.
Farmers in the UK and across Europe have used nitrate fertilisers to increase crop yields for decades. In the 1960s and 70s, before we became aware of the environmental impact and the potential health risks, their use was prolific. Nitrates deposited by farmers years ago are slowly but surely making their way through soil and rocks and into the water system. We now know that nitrates can cause health problems, but as it takes such a long time for nitrates to enter the water system, there is a huge lag to reduce and eliminate them.
Drinking water is carefully monitored for nitrate levels – when they are too high it is either mixed with water from another source to dilute the levels or treated. These interventions are costly and complicated, so the Defusing the Nitrate Timebomb project is looking at ways to prevent further nitrates entering the water system by creating models that can identify how nitrates are getting into the system.
This project, led by Portsmouth Water, seeks to identify where nitrates levels are particularly high so that action can be taken to prevent them transferring into the water system.
This might mean making payments to farmers with fields either side of a river in return for leaving fields fallow, or planting crops that don’t require lots of fertiliser, for example barley instead of wheat.
This project is all about gaining an accurate understanding of where nitrates come from so that resources to deal with the problem can be targeted most effectively.
The nitrate problem is something that won’t go away for some time; this year in particular, with wheat prices at record highs, there is an incentive to use large quantities of fertiliser to increase yields and create high protein wheat suitable for breadmaking, for which farmers receive a premium price.
However, there are solutions, such as investing in technologies that allow farmers to target fertiliser use more precisely, as well as funding accurate soil testing so they have an accurate measure of the nitrate levels present. This project is not a quick fix, but it is a crucial step in the process of maintaining the health of our rivers and water sources.
Think you could help monitor or improve water quality? Find out more about our £38 million competition, Water Breakthrough Challenge 3, here: waterinnovation.challenges.org/breakthrough3.
Need more time for your entry? Another round of the Water Breakthrough Challenge will open in autumn 2024.
