Technical Director of MWH Laboratories, Dr. Andrew Eaton’s poster on the set of indicators necessary to determine both the presence of wastewater and potential specific wastewater sources in water supplies took the top prize in the Water Quality and Health category, ahead of 32 other poster presentations in the category. Dr. Eaton’s research, ‘The List of Lists - determining the best set of indicators to show non-impact of wastewater on water supplies’, explored the challenges of identifying reliable indicators of the presence amount of wastewater in finished drinking water and identifying contaminants of emerging concerns (CEC) in wastewater effluent. “We developed a method to accurately analyse more than 90 pharmaceuticals, personal care products and pesticides in a cost-effective manner and then measured these in 17 wastewater plants and multiple finished drinking waters. We demonstrated that the compounds detected most frequently are not the most commonly measured”, explained Dr. Eaton. MWH was a founding sponsor of SIWW and a number of MWH representatives also presented research papers and participated in key panel discussions on topics including infrastructure planning for liveable cities, energy minimalisation in seawater desalination and business in India. MWH Director of Research Dr. Joe Jacangelo gave a platform presentation on the quality of recycled water produced by 38 satellite water recycling facilities across the United States (U.S.). MWH wastewater expert Dr. Art Umble explored our current rate of phosphorus use, which will see worldwide levels depleted within 70 years. Dr. Umble discussed how to reduce the demand for phosphates and how to recover phosphorus from municipal wastewaters by highlighting applicable recovery technologies that can also generate revenue for utilities. As the world shifts from looking at wastewater treatment disposal to resource recovery opportunities, energy recovery via biogas will be a key feature of resource recovery facilities of the future. MWH wastewater expert Dr. Cameron Staib discussed the range of available options to increase biogas production in wastewater facilities, their global track record and lessons learned from their applications.
