Water New Zealand Christchurch Regional Meeting

Water New Zealand invites members and non-members to attend a Christchurch Regional meeting.

Details are still being confirmed on the series of presentations but will include:

Developing a Proof-of-Concept National Pipe Data Portal, Federation and visualisation of water asset data from distributed asset owners with reference to a common water data standard - Angus Bargh and Greg Preston

The presentation will highlight the importance and value of federating asset data from different asset owners - particularly in regard to asset life-cycle management, cost control and increasing the resilience of the assets themselves. The presentation will focus on two important insights from the project - firstly that a common data standard is an important starting point and secondly, a enterprise-level approach to federating data should require as little effort as possible from the asset owner to achieve federation and success. Or to put this another way - federating data should be easy and should not require any data manipulation on the part of the asset owner to be successful. The presentation will outline how this is achieved and also provide an opportunity to solicit feedback on the potential importance and value of this work. What insight could you gain if all NZ's water asset data was accessible through a single repository?

Presenter:

Angus provided technical oversight for this proof-of-concept Quakecentre project. Angus is a transport planning engineer based in Christchurch and had a number of roles promoting data federation - particularly in regard to the planning and collaboration of horizontal physical works projects. Greg Preston is the project lead from Quakecentre and has a national role in promoting the work of Quakecentre and the value of a standards based approach to defining and visualising NZs built infrastructure.

Urban Stormwater Treatment - Frances Charters

The Impacts of Undocumented Stopbanks: a Tasman Case Study - Thomas Wallace

Across the globe floods are the most damaging natural disaster and for many communities stopbanks acts as the primary physical means of protection. Despite the councils’ best efforts there are a number of privately-owned or unconsented stopbank structures. The Tasman District Council recognises that several undocumented stopbanks exist within their jurisdiction that have not been subjected to the resource or building consent process. As a result of this the undocumented stopbanks in the Tasman region currently have an unassessed impact on flood routing. The knowledge from this study will allow the Tasman District Council to understand impacts and explore stopbank management options to reduce flood risk to residents and assets.

Presenter:

Thomas is a Masters Candidate at the University of Canterbury with a keen interest in hydraulic modelling and its uses to better understand of flood risks. Working in collaboration with the Tasman District Council and QuakeCore,Thomas is currently working to analyse the impacts of undocumented stopbanks within the Waimea floodplain on inundation extent.

Bioelectrochemical Systems for enhanced Wastewater Treatment and Energy Recovery - Ricardo Bello-Mendoza

Bioelectrochemical technologies use microorganisms to catalyse electrochemical reactions and can be applied to the removal of organic matter from water. These technologies include microbial fuel cells (MFCs) that generate electrical power when oxygen is present at the cathode and microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) that generate hydrogen while consuming a small amount of electrical power. Both are promising approaches for capturing the energy in waste biomass. In this presentation, the performance of a laboratory-scale system consisting of an up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor and an MFC for the treatment of low-strength wastewater will be discussed. The UASB reactor (1 L) was continuously fed with raw domestic wastewater under hydraulic retention times (HRT) of 12 and 6 h. The MFC (250 mL) was operated in batch mode and fed with either raw wastewater (HRT = 12 h) or the effluent from the UASB reactor (HRT = 6 h). It was found that the removal of organic matter by the coupled UASB–MFC system (88 % COD, 75 % TOC and 79 % TSS) was higher than the levels obtained by the UASB reactor (76 % COD, 66 % TOC and 73 % TSS) and the MFC (60 % COD, 53 % TOC and 40 % TSS) when these were operated individually. The highest power density obtained in the MFC was 176 mW/m² with 1000 Ω resistance, whereas the coulombic efficiency was 8 %. The UASB-MFC system proved to be a good alternative for the treatment of wastewater and the simultaneous generation of electricity even under substrate limiting conditions, such as low concentration of organic matter in the influent. The potential for the valorisation of grape marc using an integrated AD-MEC system will also be discussed.

Presenter:

Ricardo completed a bachelor of engineering degree in chemical engineering from Instituto Tecnológico de Tapachula, Mexico, in 1991, and MPhil and PhD degrees in chemical engineering with environmental technology from UMIST, now the University of Manchester, in the UK, in 1997 and 1999, respectively. He has been with the University of Canterbury since 2013, where he is currently a senior lecturer of environmental engineering. Before moving to Canterbury, he was a senior researcher in the department of environmental biotechnology of El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Tapachula, Mexico, from 2000 to 2013. He teaches courses in environmental, ecological and bioresources engineering and engineering in developing communities. His research is focused on advanced biological wastewater treatment, in particular anaerobic bioprocesses and resource recovery. Other research interests include the design and application of appropriate technologies for water, sanitation and hygiene in developing communities.

Presentations will be followed by networking drinks and nibbles.

Special thanks for GHD for sponsoring this event.