December 14, 2022
breakthrough-2 breakthrough-3 customers get-involved leak-detection leakage water-innovation winnersHow innovation can change the game in the fight against leaks and burst mains
Water companies in England and Wales have been set ambitious new targets for leaks reduction by Ofwat, incentivising them to identify where and how leakage is occurring. This will help to better maintain water network assets and avoid extensive and disruptive work when leaks or burst mains do occur.
A better understanding of leakage and burst mains will mean reduced costs for customers, fewer roadworks and reduced carbon emissions from digging up roads. There are two fields of innovation – leakage detection and leakage repair solutions – and several winners of Ofwat’s innovation competitions are focused on ideas in these fields.
Across England and Wales, just under 3 billion litres (660 million gallons) of water is lost to leaks every day – equivalent to 1,180 Olympic swimming pools. But the last few years have seen ground-breaking changes, with figures released in July 2022 showing that industry-wide leakage has been reduced by 11% since 2017-18, heading towards the target of a 50% reduction by 2050.
These innovations could help to get the sector to the next level. More examples of innovations can be found in the winners section of the website.
Curious to learn more about leaks generally, and how they are currently managed in the water sector? Read this informative blog on leaks on Ofwat’s website.
It’s estimated that 30-50% of leaks are due to background leakage – this isn’t an individual leak, rather an accumulation of a series of small leaks that you cannot find. Because of their unknown nature, the water industry can’t be sure exactly how much water is currently lost to background leakage each year. Welsh Water’s project named Managing Background Leakage, intends to provide a true understanding of the level of background leakage, and then go on to consider how best to deal with it and prevent it, saving water and saving money for customers.
The team is working in collaboration with five other water companies spread over the south of the UK and will be carrying out an intensive study in 25 different locations. Sensors will be fitted at boundary boxes, customer meter points and fire hydrants to minimise disruption. The team are deploying temperature, acoustic and pressure sensors on the water network to try and fully understand what’s going on. The various technologies already exist but have never before been used together. The results from this trial will be followed up and analysed by the University of Sheffield.
The end goal is to come to a consensus on how to measure background leakage, before coming up with a way to solve it. The results of the work will be shared back with the UK Leakage Managers Forum, which meets every quarter, so that other water companies can understand the progress made and the sector can work together to solve leakage.
There are approximately 300,000 kilometres of mains in the UK, enough to travel around the world 7.5 times. Open cut repair to pipes often require extensive disruption to customers, which is expensive. Yorkshire Water is collaborating with six other water companies to deliver the aspirational Designer Liner project to help increase the lifespan of pipes and reduce leakage. This project is being supported by RPS and Isle Utilities.
Pipe lining works in a couple of ways: when an old pipe that could potentially fail is identified, ‘pipe bursting’ can be used – this means literally putting a new pipe into an old pipe and bursting the old one. Alternatively, a pipe that still has a reasonable asset lifespan left, but just needs some help to address leakage or increase its longevity, can be spray lined. The solutions that exist in the UK at the moment are fit for a 20th century network but aren’t adapted to the challenges and demands of an evolving 21st century water network.
Lining companies find it difficult to invest in product development as they don’t have a clear understanding of the scale of the UK market. In addition, new solutions require testing and sign-off by multiple authorities and this long and expensive process means the market is at risk of stagnating. Designer Liner will explore the global lining market and identify if there are products available around the world that we could be using in the UK. If not, the project aims to create a design specification for a new lining solution so that as an industry, it is clear what needs to be produced.
Good lining solutions will almost always be cheaper and more environmentally friendly than open cut repairs, using approximately a third less carbon compared to digging up roads to replace old pipes with new. But to be effective the sector must be certain that any new solution meets the needs of the UK market and has a long lifespan. There’s a lot of interest in lining, from other water companies to supply chain to academics and industry bodies, so addressing this challenge would be mutually beneficial. If all these actors come together and contribute their knowledge and expertise, there is real potential to develop a radical solution to one of the sector’s biggest problems.
Testing out new solutions on water networks in real life environments can present many challenges. To enable innovators to realise ideas faster, Northumbrian Water is leading a project with 13 other water companies to create a National Leakage Research & Test Centre. Inventors often develop solutions on lengths of pipe in their garage but once they are happy with an idea or product, they need to conduct testing in real life situations – or on an actual water network. Whether it’s tiny robotics or new types of sealant, innovators need to find a water company that is prepared to give them time, resources and a stretch of pipe that’s disused or decommissioned to test their idea or product out. Before a new solution can progress to a live water network it must pass strict drinking water inspectorate testing and that can take anywhere from six to 18 months, which delays the process and prevents more extensive testing of these new leakage solutions.
The plan for the National Leakage Research & Test Centre is to build a highly realistic water network comprising of five kilometres of buried pipes of all different diameters and materials that is pressurised and has deliberately introduced leaks that can be monitored via sensors. It simulates customer consumption while tests are going on and is designed to catch the ‘leaked’ water and recycle it as well so water loss through testing is minimised. Inventors who use the network can conduct multiple tests as if they’re on a real network and explore all of the different scenarios that they would encounter in the live network but in a failsafe environment and supported by a team of experts employed by the centre.
As well as enabling innovations to be even more thoroughly tested, innovators can clearly demonstrate the level of skills required to deploy the solution on the real water network. Currently each water company might require three months of assessment, but in the future by testing once under strict conditions in a test centre, an idea could be certified for use across different companies at once, effectively fast-tracking proven ideas. The Centre is an innovation enabler that will accelerate innovation across the industry, meaning that innovative solutions are developed quicker and problems of leakage will be addressed much sooner.
When a toilet is flushed or the tap is run, the wastewater runs off through sewers downhill. But when it gets too deep, it needs to be pumped back up again against gravity into another section of sewer, or treatment works. These pumping sections are called rising mains – pressurised pipelines that take the flow up to the treatment works.
Because mains are continuously pumped, it’s not possible to shut them off for inspection without significant disruption. Therefore, engineers have difficulties when trying to assess the condition of mains and predict when and where bursts might happen. When a rising main section bursts it is very hard to manage and can cause pollution and uncontrolled sewage discharge.
The Pipebots for Rising Mains project led by Thames Water seeks to use tiny robots to understand the pipe condition. The team is looking at the feasibility of taking robots through pipes to identify the sections that need to be replaced. Ultimately this means spending customers’ money more wisely by targeting repairs and reducing environmental risk from burst sewers.
There are robots that exist for this kind of work in the petrochemicals industry, but these are built to work with different materials and different thicknesses of pipe. The Thames Water team are looking to see if these can be adapted for the water sector. Working in partnership with the University of Sheffield and Synthotec, the team will explore which sensors might be best to install on robots to measure deterioration in rising mains and how they would function once inside the pipes. If successful the hope is that a product could be developed and made available commercially to be deployed on wastewater networks around the UK, preventing pollution and enabling water companies to carry out repairs to rising mains in a highly targeted and cost-effective way.
Water is a precious resource. There is no sense in extracting it from the environment, spending effort and energy treating it, only for much of it to be lost on its journey. Ensuring the water network is fit for purpose with pipes that can withstand increasing demand into the next century will mean less leakage or burst mains, and therefore fewer repairs: good news for both customer wallets and for the environment.
Work in the water industry and feel inspired? Our Water Breakthrough Challenge 3 is now open for entries to win a share of £38 million – with further competitions planned for 2023 and 2024 (if you need more time). Find out more: waterinnovation.challenges.org/breakthrough3/
