Wastewater Innovation Forum

Notes of the 61st Forum meeting of 15th March 2017
Please note that for older reports some links will be to sites that are no longer active.

  1. Attendees:

    Barrie Howe Environment Agency (Chairman)
    Steve Bungay Consultant / FWR (Secretary)
    Oliver Grievson Anglian Water
    Gordon Jones FWR
    Stephen Palmer Stantec (formerly MWH)
    Pete Vale Severn Trent Water

    The meeting started with roundtable introductions. Apologies were received from a number of the forum members.

  2. Minutes of the 60th Meeting

    Minutes of the meeting were accepted.

  3. Matters arising and items not on the agenda

    Over the recent years, the Forum has been known as the “Wastewater Forum”, although the notes and minutes of the meetings were always recorded as the “Wastewater Research & Industry Support Forum”. At the recent FWR Council meeting, it was agreed to standardise the name to the “Wastewater Innovation Forum”.

    3.1 Briefing Notes / Newsletter
    SB highlighted the content of the summer, autumn, and winter Newsletters. It was agreed to ensure that the forum members were on the distribution list for the newsletter.

    3.2 Website
    Since the last forum meeting, it has been agreed to update the Forum’s webpage. The relevant page will be updated to include the activities of the forum and a short profile of the upcoming presenters, with a couple of photos. This is on going between GJ and SB.

    3.3 Social Media
    The forum now has a twitter account: @F4WaterResearch. SB currently manages this account, as it has to be password protected. As of 29th March 2017, the account had 42 followers.

  4. Areas of Research

    The four key areas (with topic leads) continue as a focus for the forum:
    1. Anti Microbial Resistance (Andrew Wheatley)
    2. Chemical Investigations Programme (Barrie Howe)
    3. Microplastics (Pete Vale)
    4. Unflushables (Nick Orman)

    We will always welcome presentations from innovative technologies such as the Dewatering Estimation Test (DET), presented today. Urban drainage, and anaerobic wastewater treatment technologies remain of key interest to the forum.

    4.1 Anti Microbial Resistance and Microplastics
    The EA have had workshops on both microplastics and AMR with the water companies, academics, and regulators. The AMR workshop considered where and how is AMR measured; when looking for resistant genes, what ones are you looking for. The FWR could play an important role in harnessing the energy from these workshops, and help to keep the groups together.

    STW’s could be a good gene transfer pool of AMR into the environment. It is known that microbes under stress increase their gene transfer, and plasmids play a key role in gene transfer. The EA are looking to understand the risks of AMR through PR19, quantifying the risks of STWs compared to hospitals.

    Is there a role for the FWR continuing this work in AMR and microplastics? It may be that the FWR could produce Reviews of Current Knowledge (ROCK) for both AMR and microplastics, action BH/GJ/SB.


  5. Other areas of research

    5.1 Anaerobic Wastewater Treatment
    The challenge is making anaerobic wastewater treatment work in temperate conditions. Severn Trent Water sponsor a number of PhDs with Cranfield University, looking at 80% COD removal at temperatures as low as 6ºC.

    Severn Trent is taking forward a paper for an anaerobic flow sheet demonstration trial.

    Anaerobic mainstream wastewater treatment combined with nutrient recovery may be the future of wastewater treatment.


  6. Future Technical Presentations
    Identifying the key areas of research has helped to focus the presentations, as it helps to identify speakers. Recently the uptake of speakers has improved, and the forum has been approached about potential presentations. The quality of the presentation remains consistently high.

    Proposed speaker: Tom Stanton, University of Nottingham. Follow up presentation on microplastics.

  7. Conferences and Key Dates

    27th  April  Strippers & Scrubbers – the fight for nitrogen recovery, recycling and removal (Aqua Enviro) 
    9 – 10th   May  SWAN (Smart Water Networks Forum) Annual Conference 
    10th  May  Urban Drainage Group Spring Conference (CIWEM) 
    22nd  June  Urban Drainage Group Summer Event (CIWEM) 
    4 – 5th  July  The BIG Phosphorus Conference and Exhibition (Aqua Enviro) 
    5 – 6th  July  UK AD & Biogas World Biogas Expo 2017 (ADBA )
    9 -13th  July  SludgeTech 2017 


  8. Any other business

    8.1 Catchment Management
    The WaSCs are likely to undertake significant investment on dry weather flow, and full flow to treatment.

    8.2 Smart Wastewater Networks
    According to OG, the SWAN Forum is updating their Smart wastewater Tool. The FWR document “Design Criteria and Performance Standards for Urban Drainage Systems” is still a highly relevant manual.

    8.3 CIP2
    CIP is reporting at the moment. There will be a five-year programme of over 100 STWs. This will feature heavily in AMP7 based on the first year of analysis. CIWEM is looking to host an event on priority substances September/October 2017. This conference should present the data captured during CIP2 by the WaSCs.

    8.4 Forum Membership
    SB is starting to look at the current membership. It currently includes two water companies, two universities, four consultancies, two regulators, and three independent consultants. We are looking to increase and broaden our membership base. SB will be inviting two universities and one water company to join the forum, before the next meeting, but would welcome suggestions from other forum members.


  9. Actions

    1. BH Discuss with Defra about the possibility of the FWR producing a ROCK for AMR
    2. GJ/SB Speak with FWR about ROCKs for both AMR and microplastics. CEH may be a suitable author for microplastics
    3. GJ/SB Continue with updating of forum website page
    4. PV/NO Provide information/update on extract blockages/SNAP group
    5. ALL Suggestions for presentations
      Suggestions for new members

  10. Technical Presentations

    There were 18 attendees for the technical presentations (including speakers and CIWEM WwBP: Apostolos Antonacopoulos, Steve Bungay, Alastair Chisholm, Rachel Edgington, Mike Faram, Karyn Georges, Laura Grant, Oliver Grievson, Nick Hawkins, Alice Horton, Barrie Howe, Gordon Jones, Stephen Palmer, Blake Prime, Steve Smith, Tom Taylor, Pete Vale, and John Ward).

    The Abundance and Sources of Microplastics in Freshwater Environments
    Dr Alice Horton, Research Associate – CEH
    Alice’s presentation gave an overview of the work she has done to date, including her study on microplastics within Thames Basin sediments and the ongoing studies looking at effects of microplastics on organisms. Her research focuses on microplastics (plastic particles <5mm in size); these are introduced to the environment from consumer products or by degradation of larger plastic items and are recognised as an “emerging contaminant”.

    Dewaterability Estimation Test (DET) for Sewage Sludge Monitoring
    Prof Apostolos Antonacopoulos and Dr Blake Prime – University of Salford
    This presentation “” introduced a new ‘Dewaterability Estimation Test’ (DET) technique that addresses the shortfalls of the traditional CST test, with potential to become the preferred choice for the water and sludge industry.

  11. Dates of next meetings

    The dates of the next two meetings of the Forum are:
    Wednesday 14th June; and
    Wednesday 18th October 2017,
    commencing at 11:00 hrs.