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For further details and to register, please visit the event website.
Please briefly explain your role, involvement, and experience with hydraulic modelling and the water industry
Ciaran Farrell (CF): I’m a Senior Mechanical Engineer in the MEICA team of the Engineering department at South East Water, involved mainly in ‘Above Ground’ capital projects such as water treatment works (WTWs) expansions, pumping station refurbishments, chemical dosing upgrades and various other asset investment schemes. Covering sites all across Kent, Sussex, and parts of Hampshire and Berkshire, nearly all projects we come across involve some level of hydraulic modelling, from borehole catchment management, WTW flow hydraulics, pump sizing, surge analysis of pumping mains, and CFD analysis of tanks & reservoirs.
What is the top challenge facing your industry at present?
CF: I’d say this might be the need to maintain ageing assets whilst dealing with higher operating costs and tighter regulatory targets, often with an operational workforce that is already stretched. In any line of work it can be difficult to improve things whilst still delivering business-as-usual output.
Another key challenge going forward is the aim to reduce the water consumption/usage of our customers across an ever-increasing population, alongside increasing output of our own water treatment works and improving efficiency of our distribution networks. The smallest gains are often the hardest!
How would you say your industry has evolved over the past five years?
CF: There is definitely a promising push towards innovation and improving efficiency, with preventative maintenance and other proactive approaches trickling over from more output-focused industries such as process and petrochemical. I believe the water industry still has a way to go but we’re getting there, everywhere you look there are good ideas but it’s often just the resources and appetite required to implement them!
What developments are going on in your industry that may have an impact on the development of future approaches to the use of modelling?
CF: There’s a few ‘new’ and future water quality hurdles on the horizon that are requiring the installation of new treatment processes/technologies into existing works, such as UV disinfection and nitrate & chromium removal. These often have to be shoehorned in or added in parallel to existing plants so the application of modelling is going to become more important as more of these processes emerge.
What will you be presenting at the ‘Hydraulic Modelling’ seminar and how will this benefit participants?
CF: I’ll be discussing a few challenges and issues that we as a water utility have come across over the years, which were either solved by or could have been avoided through the application of hydraulic modelling. I won’t necessarily be providing the answers to anyone’s problems, but I hope to get the cogs whirring in terms of previous experiences that attendees might have had in the past, and maybe spark some collaborative conversation.
Which other speakers and presentations are you looking forward to hearing at the forthcoming seminar?
CF: Dr Peter Glover’s piece on surge analysis will be particularly relevant to projects I’m usually involved with, as well as Miguel Cano’s presentation on CFD modelling and Matthew Mullarkey’s around treatment works hydraulics. I’ll also be recommending the seminar to colleagues across SEW who would benefit from any of the topics.
Why is it important for engineers and industry to come together at this event and share best practice?
CF: With water utilities being mostly separate entities, there will always be a tendency for silo working without the time or opportunity for collaborative problem solving between companies. Regardless of industry or job role, the likelihood is that any problem you come across has already been tackled and solved by someone else, so why reinvent the wheel!
The Hydraulic Modelling for the Water Industry seminar will take place on 19 June in Midlands.
Presentations will cover the assessments used to ensure water quality and to verify that infrastructure and equipment can deal with the expected design flows. Join to discuss current and novel computational (CFD) and physical modelling techniques, together with a technical review of the assessment criteria involved and significant modelling and experimental methods.
For further details and to register, please visit the event website.