Advances in Water Treatment and Enviromental Management

Abstract

around the world and especially so in Europe, where the quality of each nation’s water is increasingly judged against standards established in EC Directives, and where the water sector is undergoing change due to factors such as privatisation. This volume contains a discussion of developments in policy, current practice and emerging technologies in the water sector and related industries and the environment. The papers in this collection are grouped into sections covering: evolution of policy, groundwater quality, plant design and construction, plant development, control and measurement techniques, and water treatment technologies and applications. The interaction of water with the wider environment is discussed in sections devoted to rivers and river management and to the management of estuaries and beaches. Participants in the discussion on policy matters include a spokesman for the National Rivers Authority addressing the role of this new regulatory agency for the UK’s water, and a spokeswoman from Compagnie Générale des Eaux on the challenges of implementing the EC’s drinking water directive. Papers devoted to design and construction of plant and plant development discuss how the water sector is being increasingly drawn towards the process industries both in terms of approach and of technology. Specific case studies of installations at Lyon are presented by local representatives from the Compagnie Générale des Eaux and the Greater Lyon Council. Reports on new work on specific water treatment technologies include the use of zeolites as a possible alternative to granular activated carbon for removing chlorinated organics from drinking water (performed in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Bath, UK), a computer model used to improve ion exchange denitrification of drinking water at high sulphate levels (at the Cranfield Institute of Technology, UK) and modelling of the efficiency of hydrocyclones in treating oily water (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche at Grenoble, France). With regard to the interaction of water with the wider environment, keynote speaker (and prizewinning environmental author) Jeremy Pursglove stresses the positive contribution engineers can make when given a wider ‘greener’ brief. Pursglove explains that the straightening out of rivers and stripping of trees from their banks resulted from engineers being given too narrow a brief which did not include the potential for making environmental improvements. Environmental considerations can even pay their way, says Pursglove, citing the example of ‘science parks’ which are well landscaped and command a higher price. Pursglove denies that he was fighting an uphill battle when trying to introduce ‘green’ concepts into engineering schemes—‘though it is still a battle’—but he stresses that such ideas must be brought in at the initial stage to avoid costly changes later