Severn Trent, at a visit to the Nereda® Wastewater Treatment Plant in Carrigtwohill, Ireland. Photo credit: Royal HaskoningDHV
Severn Trent Water has awarded contracts to install Nereda® technology in two more of its key wastewater treatment facilities, becoming the biggest supporter of the cutting edge water purification system in the United Kingdom (U.K.) to date.
Walsall Wood Sewage Treatment Works in the West Midlands, and Radcliffe-on-Trent Sewage Treatment Works at Nottinghamshire are now currently undergoing significant improvements and upgrades, and are due to be commissioned in 2018. The contractors are MacDonald Bentley and North Midlands Construction for Walsall Wood and Radcliffe respectively.
For both sites, Severn Trent found Nereda to be the most cost-efficient solution on CAPEX as well as on OPEX. Now, Nereda is viewed as the solution of first choice for any site where complete asset replacement is needed. Furthermore, the improvements for Walsall Wood and Radcliffe mean that the two plants will be able to meet strict new standards for phosphorus and ammonia levels.
In the U.K., Severn Trent was one of the earliest adopters of Nereda technology, having awarded the system the contract for its installation at the Barston Sewage Treatment Works near Birmingham in 2016. Nereda, however, also has been tried and tested around the world, from South America to South Africa, and Europe to Australia.
Conceptualised and developed by Royal HaskoningDHV in the Netherlands, Nereda is the first step in successfully harnessing the benefits of aerobic granular sludge technology; the product naturally selects fast settling granules, enabling higher concentrations of active biomass to be accumulated. Compact plants are able to realise very high levels of nutrient removal without chemical dosing, and applications can either be newly-built or retrofitted. Nereda’s compactness is also a vital factor in its competitive edge; it only needs about a quarter of the land area needed for conventional activated sludge, in addition to its relatively low installation and running costs.
“Installing Nereda will significantly improve the quality of effluent we put back into the water courses in both areas,” Manjit Chadha, from Severn Trent, observed. “In addition to the system’s efficiency and environmental credentials, which are extremely impressive, its relatively low capital expenditure requirement made it a very straightforward choice for us.”
Technical Manager at Royal HaskoningDHV, Andrew Thompson added, “Once you look at the whole life cost of a wastewater treatment works, choosing Nereda makes perfect economic sense – not only due to its low capital expenditure requirements, but also because the operational costs are low in comparison to other treatment solutions.”
