Rheological characterisation of concentrated domestic slurry.

The much over-looked element in new sanitation, the transport systems which bridge the source and treatment facilities, is the focus of this study. The knowledge of rheological properties of concentrated domestic slurry is essential for the design of the waste collection and transport systems. To investigate these properties, samples were collected from a pilot sanitation system in the Netherlands. Two types of slurries were examined: black water (consisting of human faecal waste, urine, and flushed water from vacuum toilets) and black water with ground kitchen waste. Rheograms of these slurries were obtained using a narrow gap rotating rheometer and modelled using a Herschel-Bulkley model. The effect of concentration on the slurry are described through the changes in the parameters of the Herschel-Bulkley model. A detailed method is proposed on estimating the parameters for the rheological models. For the black water, yield stress and consistency index follow an increasing power law with the concentration and the behaviour index follows a decreasing power law. The influence of temperature on the viscosity of the slurry is described using an Arrhenius type relation. The viscosity of black water decreases with temperature. As for the black water mixed with ground kitchen waste, it is found that the viscosity increases with concentration and decreases with temperature. The viscosity of black-water with ground kitchen waste is found to be higher than that of black water, which can be attributed to the presence of larger particles in the slurry.

Monitoring and statistical modelling of sedimentation in gully pots.

Gully pots are essential assets designed to relief the downstream system by trapping solids and attached pollutants suspended in runoff. This study applied a methodology to develop a quantitative gully pot sedimentation and blockage model. To this end, sediment bed level time series from 300 gully pots, spanning 15 months, were collected. A generalised linear mixed modelling (GLMM) approach was applied to model and quantify the accumulation of solids in gully pots and to identify relevant physical and catchment properties that influence the complex trapping processes. Results show that the retaining efficiency decreases as sediment bed levels increase. Two typical silting evolutions were identified. Approximately 5% of all gully pots experienced progressive silting, eventually resulting in a blockage. The other gully pots show stabilising sediment bed levels. The depth of the sand trap, elapsed time since cleaning and the road type were identified to be the main properties discriminating progressive accumulation from stabilising sediment bed levels. Furthermore, sediment bed levels exhibit no residual spatial correlation, indicating that the vulnerability to a blockage is reduced as adjacent gully pots provide a form of redundancy. The findings may aid to improve maintenance strategies in order to safeguard the performance of gully pots.

Comparison of core sampling and visual inspection for assessment of concrete sewer pipe condition.

Sewer systems are costly to construct and even more costly to replace, requiring proper asset management. Sewer asset management relies to a large extent on available information. In sewer systems where pipe corrosion is the dominant failure mechanism, visual inspection by closed circuit television (CCTV) and core sampling are among the methods mostly applied to assess sewer pipe condition. This paper compares visual inspection and drill core analysis in order to enhance further understanding of the limitations and potentials of both methods. Both methods have been applied on a selected sewer reach in the city of The Hague, which was reportedly subject to pipe corrosion. Results show that both methods, visual inspection and core sampling, are associated with large uncertainties and that there is no obvious correlation between results of visual inspection and results of drill core analysis.

Settlement as a driver for sewer rehabilitation.

This paper assesses the influence of (differential) settlement on sewer system functioning. Based on historical data of the vertical position of sewer invert levels, tilt measurements and in-sewer inspection videos, settlement and settlement related influences are analyzed for a case study area in Amsterdam. The average settlement rate of this system was 4 mm/year. Given this settlement rate, it is shown that settlement significantly influences sewer system functioning within the lifetime of a sewer (system).

Assessing characteristic time and space scales of in-sewer processes by analysis of one year of continuous in-sewer monitoring data.

Long-term and high-frequency in-sewer monitoring opens up a broad range of possibilities to study (influences on) water quantity and quality variations. Using data from the Eindhoven wastewater system in The Netherlands both dry weather flow and wet weather flow situations have been studied. For approximately 160 dry weather days mean diurnal variations of flow and pollutant concentrations have been derived. For wet weather situations (≈ 40 storm events) peak load factors have been studied. Generally, peak load factors for all considered pollutant parameters are larger than one. Peak load factors for particulate matter are larger than for dissolved constituents. Also, the smallest catchment area consistently shows the largest mean peak factors and vice versa.

The efficiency of asset management strategies to reduce urban flood risk.

In this study, three asset management strategies were compared with respect to their efficiency to reduce flood risk. Data from call centres at two municipalities were used to quantify urban flood risks associated with three causes of urban flooding: gully pot blockage, sewer pipe blockage and sewer overloading. The efficiency of three flood reduction strategies was assessed based on their effect on the causes contributing to flood risk. The sensitivity of the results to uncertainty in the data source, citizens' calls, was analysed through incorporation of uncertainty ranges taken from customer complaint literature. Based on the available data it could be shown that increasing gully pot blockage is the most efficient action to reduce flood risk, given data uncertainty. If differences between cause incidences are large, as in the presented case study, call data are sufficient to decide how flood risk can be most efficiently reduced. According to the results of this analysis, enlargement of sewer pipes is not an efficient strategy to reduce flood risk, because flood risk associated with sewer overloading is small compared to other failure mechanisms.

Flood risk modelling based on tangible and intangible urban flood damage quantification.

The usual way to quantify flood damage is by application stage-damage functions. Urban flood incidents in flat areas mostly result in intangible damages like traffic disturbance and inconvenience for pedestrians caused by pools at building entrances, on sidewalks and parking spaces. Stage-damage functions are not well suited to quantify damage for these floods. This paper presents an alternative method to quantify flood damage that uses data from a municipal call centre. The data cover a period of 10 years and contain detailed information on consequences of urban flood incidents. Call data are linked to individual flood incidents and then assigned to specific damage classes. The results are used to draw risk curves for a range of flood incidents of increasing damage severity. Risk curves for aggregated groups of damage classes show that total flood risk related to traffic disturbance is larger than risk of damage to private properties, which in turn is larger than flood risk related to human health. Risk curves for detailed damage classes show how distinctions can be made between flood risks related to many types of occupational use in urban areas. This information can be used to support prioritisation of actions for flood risk reduction. Since call data directly convey how citizens are affected by urban flood incidents, they provide valuable information that complements flood risk analysis based on hydraulic models.

Microbial risks associated with exposure to pathogens in contaminated urban flood water.

Urban flood incidents induced by heavy rainfall in many cases entail flooding of combined sewer systems. These flood waters are likely to be contaminated and may pose potential health risks to citizens exposed to pathogens in these waters. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the microbial risk associated with sewer flooding incidents. Concentrations of Escherichia coli, intestinal enterococci and Campylobacter were measured in samples from 3 sewer flooding incidents. The results indicate faecal contamination: faecal indicator organism concentrations were similar to those found in crude sewage under high-flow conditions and Campylobacter was detected in all samples. Due to infrequent occurrence of such incidents only a small number of samples could be collected; additional data were collected from controlled flooding experiments and analyses of samples from combined sewers. The results were used for a screening-level quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA). Calculated annual risks values vary from 5 x 10(-6) for Cryptosporidium assuming a low exposure scenario to 0.03 for Giardia assuming a high exposure scenario. The results of this screening-level risk assessment justify further research and data collection to allow more reliable quantitative assessment of health risks related to contaminated urban flood waters.

Fibre-optic distributed temperature sensing in combined sewer systems.

This paper introduces the application of fibre-optic distributed temperature sensing (DTS) in combined sewer systems. The DTS-technique uses a fibre-optic cable that is inserted into a combined sewer system in combination with a laser instrument that performs measurements and logs the data. The DTS-technique allows monitoring in-sewer temperatures with dense spatial and temporal resolutions. The installation of a fibre-optic cable in a combined sewer system has proven feasible. The use of a single instrument in an easy accessible and safe location that can simultaneously monitor up to several hundreds of monitoring locations makes the DTS set-up easy in use and nearly free of maintenance. Temperature data from a one-week monitoring campaign in an 1,850 m combined sewer system shows the level of detail with which in-sewer processes that affect wastewater temperatures can be studied. Individual discharges from house-connections can be tracked in time and space. With a dedicated cable configuration the confluence of wastewater flows can be observed with a potential to derive the relative contributions of contributary flows to a total flow. Also, the inflow and in-sewer propagation of stormwater can be monitored.

Locating illicit connections in storm water sewers using fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing.

A newly developed technique using distributed temperature sensing (DTS) has been developed to find illicit household sewage connections to storm water systems in the Netherlands. DTS allows for the accurate measurement of temperature along a fiber-optic cable, with high spatial (2m) and temporal (30s) resolution. We inserted a fiber-optic cable of 1300m in two storm water drains. At certain locations, significant temperature differences with an intermittent character were measured, indicating inflow of water that was not storm water. In all cases, we found that foul water from households or companies entered the storm water system through an illicit sewage connection. The method of using temperature differences for illicit connection detection in storm water networks is discussed. The technique of using fiber-optic cables for distributed temperature sensing is explained in detail. The DTS method is a reliable, inexpensive and practically feasible method to detect illicit connections to storm water systems, which does not require access to private property.

Fault tree analysis for urban flooding.

Traditional methods to evaluate flood risk generally focus on heavy storm events as the principal cause of flooding. Conversely, fault tree analysis is a technique that aims at modelling all potential causes of flooding. It quantifies both overall flood probability and relative contributions of individual causes of flooding. This paper presents a fault model for urban flooding and an application to the case of Haarlem, a city of 147,000 inhabitants. Data from a complaint register, rainfall gauges and hydrodynamic model calculations are used to quantify probabilities of basic events in the fault tree. This results in a flood probability of 0.78/week for Haarlem. It is shown that gully pot blockages contribute to 79% of flood incidents, whereas storm events contribute only 5%. This implies that for this case more efficient gully pot cleaning is a more effective strategy to reduce flood probability than enlarging drainage system capacity. Whether this is also the most cost-effective strategy can only be decided after risk assessment has been complemented with a quantification of consequences of both types of events. To do this will be the next step in this study.

Probabilistic modeling of sewer deterioration using inspection data.

Accurate prediction of current and future conditions of sewer systems is crucial to manage the sewer system wisely, cost-effectively and efficiently. The application of historical databases of visual inspection data to sewer deterioration modeling seems common sense. However, in The Netherlands, sewer inspection data is only used to determine the direct need for rehabilitation. This paper outlines the possibilities of using inspection data for deterioration modeling and discusses the problems encountered. A case study was performed on the modeling of the condition aspect 'surface damage by corrosion or mechanical action' using a Markov model.

Changes in isotope ratios during domestic wastewater production.

This paper presents considerations for the application of the natural water isotope method on catchment areas. For the estimation of the amount of infiltration and inflow in sewer systems the paper shows two applications in the Netherlands: one successful application on a relatively small catchment area with a simple geo-hydrological groundwater system and one unsuccessful application in an area that shows a large heterogeneity of delta 18O values in groundwater. Also, the paper focuses on the validity of the assumption that the isotopic ratios of drinking water are equal to those of strict domestic wastewater. In the transition from drinking water to strict wastewater it is shown that changes in isotopic composition of the water due to evaporation in common household appliances and effects inside the human body are insignificant. However, the presence of high-efficiency condensing boilers in an area can significantly influence the delta 18O value of strict wastewater, especially in winter months. This effect should be taken into account when applying the isotope method in such areas.

Breakdown of air pockets in downwardly inclined sewerage pressure mains.

In the Netherlands, wastewater is collected in municipal areas and transported to centralised WWTPs by an extensive system of pressure mains. Over the last decades these pressure mains did not receive much attention in terms of monitoring of performance or maintenance. A recent inventory showed that half of the pressure mains show an increased pressure loss for no directly obvious reason. One of the many causes that account for the reduction of the flow capacity is the occurrence of free gas in the pipeline. During dry weather periods with low flow velocities, gas may accumulate at high points in the system. Once the velocity increases during storm weather flow, the air pockets may be broken down and transported to the end of the system. A research study is started focussing on the description of the gas-water phenomena in wastewater pressure mains with respect to transportation of gas. An experimental facility is constructed for the study of multi-phase flow. This paper describes the preliminary results of experiments on breakdown rates of gas pockets as a function of inclination angle and water flow rate. The results show an increasing breakdown rate with increasing inclination angle.

Temperature and conductivity as control parameters for pollution-based real-time control.

Most sewer system performance indicators are not easily measurable online at high frequencies in wastewater systems, which hampers real-time control with those parameters. Instead of using a constituent of wastewater, an alternative could be to use characteristics of wastewater that are relatively easily measurable in sewer systems and could serve as indicator parameters for the dilution process of wastewater. This paper focuses on the possibility to use the parameters of temperature and conductivity. It shows a good relation of temperature and conductivity with the dilution of DWF (dry weather flow) during WWF (wet weather flow) a monitoring station in Graz, Austria, as an example. The simultaneous monitoring of both parameters leads to valuable back-up information in case one parameter (temperature) shows no reaction to a storm event. However, for various reasons, anomalies occur in the typical behaviour of both parameters. The frequency and extent of these anomalies will determine the usefulness of the proposed parameters in a system for pollution-based real-time control. Both the normal behaviour and the anomalies will be studied further by means of trend and correlation analyses of data to be obtained from a monitoring network for the parameters of interest that is currently being set up in the Netherlands.

Interactions within the wastewater system: requirements for sewer processes modelling.

Today's focus on wastewater system optimisation necessitates the development of knowledge on the interactions between sewer systems and wastewater treatment, since these interactions have often been neglected in the past. In this paper the question is discussed to what extent it is favourable and possible to include dynamic changes of wastewater quality in wastewater system optimisation studies. The sensitivity of the wastewater treatment works to influent fluctuations proved to be the key issue in determining which sewer processes are involved in the dynamic interactions between sewer systems and treatment works. The preliminary results show the importance of a good description of the transport processes involving the double and suspended fractions.

Increasing wastewater system performance--the importance of interactions between sewerage and wastewater treatment.

The necessity to assess sewer systems and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) as integral parts of the wastewater system has been well known for several years and discussed in many conferences. Until recently, sewer systems and WWTPs were improved (or optimised) separately or independently, which resulted in suboptimal solutions. Nowadays, in The Netherlands as well as in other European countries, a trend can be recognised towards more integral solutions. Nevertheless, due to a lack of knowledge on the interactions between the sewer systems and the WWTPs the implementation of this way of thinking in practice takes a long time. This paper describes the results of two cases in which the interactions between sewerage and wastewater treatment are incorporated within the optimisation of a wastewater system. The first case illustrates the importance of taking the interactions into account, while the second case shows how to deal with the interactions within a wastewater system optimisation study. It is concluded that the combination of total wastewater system analysis, incorporating the interactions within the wastewater system, with efficient search algorithms is expected to be very valuable in future wastewater system optimisation studies.