世界最大的水上漂浮太阳能电站将为伦敦水厂供能
“纳米膜厕所”项目获得创新大奖
以色列研究人员称地下苦咸水比海水更适合作为RO脱盐工艺的水源
美国有望立法逐步取消铅制输水管线
阿联酋投资研究云催化增雨技术以应对严重水短缺
世界最大的水上漂浮太阳能电站将为伦敦水厂供能
World's biggest floating solar farm powers London water treatment plants
© Martin Godwin, the Guardian
In the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir at the outskirts of London, five years in planning and due to be finished in early March, the £6m QEII floating solar power farm project will generate enough electricity to power the utility’s local water treatment plants for decades. It will be Europe’s largest floating solar power farm and will briefly be the world’s biggest.
More than 23,000 solar panels will be floated at the reservoir near Walton onThames, representing 6.3MW of capacity. The energy will help provide clean drinking water to a populace of close to 10 million peoplein greater London and the south-east of England, a huge and often unrecognised drain on electricity, rather than nearby homes.
Eighteen metres deep, the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir provides water for Londoners in a constantly churning stream. Although most of the population growth in London tends to be towards the east, most of the water still comes from reservoirs to the west of the city.
23,000 floating panels, covering only about 6% of the reservoir, will almost have no impact on the ecosystem.Though waterbirds, including moorhens and gulls, live on the margins, and a thin scum of litter is visible at the shore, the reservoir is not intended as a home to wildlife, and any fish living here are accidental visitors.
A similar floating solar farm with around half the capacity of the Thames Water project is being built by water company United Utilities on a reservoir near Manchester. Construction of an even bigger farm -at 13.7 MW, more than twice the QEII farm - is underway on a reservoir inland-scarce Japan and due to finish in 2018.
“纳米膜厕所”项目获得创新大奖
Nano membrane toilet helps Cranfield University win Queen’s Anniversary Prize
Cranfield University received its fourth Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in recognition of its education and research on water and sanitation for developing countries over a 25-year period. One of the projects acknowledged aspart of the award includes the Nano Membrane Toilet, which the university developed in conjunction with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The university received $800,000 worth of funding from the ‘Reinvent the Toilet Challenge’ of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Water. Cranfield’s Nano Membrane Toilet can treat human waste on-site without external energy or water, allowing it to be safely transported away and potentially reused.
© Cranfield University
The concept uses a combination of nano and advanced water treatment technologies and works by essentially reducing the water content of the sludge through membranes that allow extraction of water as a vapour, using a mechanism powered by the user. Resulting sludge moves downwards under gravity and is encapsulated in briquette form, with the potential for reuse in combusting orapplying to land as a fertiliser.
Cranfield University said the reinvented toilet will also have potential in developed as well as developing countries. Four members of the Nano Membrane Toilet team have travelled to Ghana to understand potential users’ views and ideasabout the toilet’s design and development, and the university hopes to bring it to Africa for trials soon.
The Queen’s Anniversary Prizes are awarded every two years to universities and colleges for innovative applied research shown to be producing practical benefits for ordinary people.
以色列研究人员称地下苦咸水比海水更适合作为RO脱盐工艺的水源
Researchers find saline groundwater better water source than seawater
Israeli researchers have found that brackish groundwater from coastal aquifers serves as a better water source option than seawater for reverse osmosis (RO) desalination due to reduced pre-treatment costs and membrane fouling.
The study showed that aquifer filtration increases the feed water quality and reduces the need for extensive pre-treatment processes. Saline groundwater offers multiple benefits, which include water temperatures atconsistent level, and low levels of dissolved oxygen, phytoplankton and silt density. RO desalination with saline groundwater as feed water is more efficient, with higher freshwater recoveries, less chemical use and maintenance, and therefore less overall operational costs.
BGU Zuckerberg Institute's Department of Desalination and Water Treatment senior lecturer Dr. Roni Kasher indicated that decision-makers in both California and Israel can use this research to seriously consider saline groundwater as a realistic alternative when planning future large-scale seawater desalination facilities.
'In Israel, seawater desalination accounts for 60% of the total freshwater supply, so these findings are significant.' BGU researcher Shaked Stein said. 'Saline groundwater results from seawater intrusion into coastal aquifers, shifting the fresh-saline water interface upward and landward, and replaces fresh groundwater with saline groundwater. The RO process in coastal aquifers will also be helpful in restraining seawater intrusion.'
美国有望立法逐步取消铅制输水管线
US works on the complete removal of lead service lines
The Board of the American Water Works Association (AWWA) voted unanimously to support recommendations from the National Drinking Water Advisory Council that strengthen the Lead and Copper Rule and ultimately lead to the complete removalof lead service lines.
Some of the Council's key recommendations for water utilities include 1. Locate and replace all lead service lines completely, sharing responsibility for that replacement withcustomers, 2. Conduct additional monitoring and analysis of water quality parameters in order to better manage corrosion control, 3. Expand on current educational outreach to alert customers, particularly customers with lead service lines, to the risks posed by lead and steps they can take to reduce those risks, and 4. Analyze customer samples for lead upon request.
AWWA CEO David La France said that the board’s support for the Council's recommendations underscored the importance of protecting families today from lead exposure and a shared responsibility among utilities, customers, propertyowners and government for the complete removal of lead service lines overtime.
AWWA published new analysis estimating that 6.1 million lead service lines remain in U.S. communities, suggesting progress in lead service line removal over the past two decades but indicating an estimated $30 billion challenge remains.
阿联酋投资研究云催化增雨技术以应对严重水短缺
UAE banks on 'rainmakers' to secure future water supply
UAE receives less than 100mm rainfall a year, and much of that is lost to evaporation because of extreme heat. Winter rains are especially rare. Despite having such natural scarcity, the country is also one of the world’s biggest per capita consumers of water.
With the Gulf region confronting an even hotter, drier future under climate change – potentially testing the limits of human endurance – the United Arab Emirates (UAE) leadership is hoping to secure the country’s water supply by wringing more moisture out of the clouds.
© UAEREP
The UAE launched an international research prize for weather modification, awarding a first tranche of $5m to researchers from Germany, Japan and the UAE.
“The work we do oday isn’t like the old cloud seeding. This is more advanced, and more involved in finding solutions in the way that nature works,” said Masataka Murakami, of Nagoya University’s Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, who will lead one of the awarded research teams. Over the next three years, Murakami’s team will deploy sensors and algorithms to identify the most promising clouds.
A German team, led by Professor Volker Wulfmeyer of the University of Hohenheim, will study how winds and topography affect cloud formation and movement. Linda Zou will lead a team of researchers from the UAE’s Masdar Institute of Science and Technology using nano technology to increase water condensation within the cloud.
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