An Acoustic Sensor for Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Screen Condition Monitoring in a Drainage Infrastructure.

Combined sewer overflow structures (CSO) play an important role in sewer networks. When the local capacity of a sewer system is exceeded during intense rainfall events, they act as a "safety valve" and discharge excess rainfall run-off and wastewater directly to a natural receiving water body, thus preventing widespread urban flooding. There is a regulatory requirement that solids in CSO spills must be small and their amount strictly controlled. Therefore, a vast majority of CSOs in the UK contain screens. This paper presents the results of a feasibility study of using low-cost, low-energy acoustic sensors to remotely assess the condition of CSO screens to move to cost-effective reactive maintenance visits. In situ trials were carried out in several CSOs to evaluate the performance of the acoustic sensor under realistic screen and flow conditions. The results demonstrate that the system is robust within ±2.5% to work successfully in a live CSO environment. The observed changes in the screen condition resulted in 8-39% changes in the values of the coefficient in the proposed acoustic model. These changes are detectable and consistent with observed screen and hydraulic data. This study suggested that acoustic-based sensing can effectively monitor the CSO screen blockage conditions and hence reduce the risk of non-compliant CSO spills.

An eigenvalue correction due to scattering by a rough wall of an acoustic waveguide.

In this paper a derivation of the attenuation factor in a waveguide with stochastic walls is presented. The perturbation method and Fourier analysis are employed to derive asymptotically consistent boundary-value problems at each asymptotic order. The derived approximation predicts the attenuation of the propagating mode in a rough waveguide through a correction to the eigenvalue corresponding to smooth walls. The proposed approach can be used to derive results that are consistent with those obtained by Bass et al. [IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. 22, 278-288 (1974)]. The novelty of the method is that it does not involve the integral Dyson-type equation and, as a result, the large number of statistical moments included in the equation in the form of the mass operator of the volume scattering theory. The derived eigenvalue correction is described by the correlation function of the randomly rough surface. The averaged solution in the plane wave regime is approximated by the exponential function dependent on the derived eigenvalue correction. The approximations are compared with numerical results obtained using the finite element method (FEM). An approach to retrieve the correct deviation in roughness height and correlation length from multiple numerical realizations of the stochastic surface is proposed to account for the oversampling of the rough surface occurring in the FEM meshing procedure.

Effect of temperature on the substrate utilization profiles of microbial communities in different sewer sediments.

Sewer systems represent an essential component of modern society. They have a major impact on our quality of life by preventing serious illnesses caused by waterborne diseases, by protecting the environment, and by enabling economic and social development through reducing flood risk. In the UK, systems are normally large and complex and, because of the long lifespan of these assets, their performance and hence their management are influenced by long-term environmental and urban changes. Recent work has focussed on the long-term changes in the hydraulic performance of these systems in response to climate change, e.g. rainfall and economic development. One climate-related driver that has received little attention is temperature, which may in itself have a complex dependence on factors such as rainfall. This study uses Biolog EcoPlates to investigate the effect of different temperatures (4 degrees C, 24 degrees C and 30 degrees C) on the carbon substrate utilization profiles of bacterial communities within sewer sediment deposits. Distinct differences in the metabolic profiles across the different temperatures were observed. Increasing temperature resulted in a shift in biological activity with an increase in the number of different carbon sources that can be utilized. Certain carboxylic and amino acids, however, did not support growth, regardless of temperature. Distinct differences in carbon utilization profiles were also found within sewers that have similar inputs. Therefore, this study has demonstrated that the carbon utilization profile for microbial communities found within sewer sediment deposits is dependent on both temperature and spatial variations.