Harvesting Energy from Buried Infrastructure: current UKCRIC research

Author(s):  
Fleur Loveridge ◽  
Paul Shepley ◽  
Ross Stirling ◽  
Anil Yildiz

<p>The UK Government has a commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Because 70% of heating comes from direct burning of natural gas, this target cannot be achieved without decarbonising the gas network. One of the best routes to decarbonise heating is through use of ground thermal energy storage coupled with ground source heat pump systems. However, heat pump systems retain high investments costs, mainly due to the expense of drilling dedicated ground heat exchangers (GHE) such as deep boreholes. One route to reducing these costs is to use buried infrastructure for simultaneous structural function and ground heat exchange. In the past deep foundations, embedded retaining walls and trial tunnels have all been used as GHE.  However, there is increasing interest in extending this approach to other shallow buried infrastructure, such as waste and drinking water distribution networks, and green infrastructure such as sustainable urban drainage and swales. </p><p>The UK Collabatorium for Research in Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC) is a consortium founded by thirteen universities to provide an integrated research capability with a mission to underpin the renewal, sustainment and improvement of infrastructure and cities in the UK and elsewhere. Under the auspices of UKCRIC, a pump priming project called PLEXUS has been carried out. One of the research challenges of PLEXUS has been to consider how much heating and cooling capacity can be obtained from using civil engineering infrastructure as GHE, and whether there are any risks to original structural function from the GHE operation.  The project has included trial experiments for (i) soil element thermo-mechanical and thermo-hydraulic behaviour, (ii) the operation of sustainable urban drainage under heat injection, (iii) heat transfer characteristics of a near full scale water pipe segment, (iv) effects of temperature change on the formation of fats, oils and greases in waste water treatment systems. This paper will present a summary of key findings from the project and identify challenges for implementation of this valuable thermal resource. </p>

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 3792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Locatelli ◽  
Maria Guerrero ◽  
Beniamino Russo ◽  
Eduardo Martínez-Gomariz ◽  
David Sunyer ◽  
...  

Green infrastructure (GI) contributes to improve urban drainage and also has other societal and environmental benefits that grey infrastructure usually does not have. Economic assessment for urban drainage planning and decision making often focuses on flood criteria. This study presents an economic assessment of GI based on a conventional cost-benefit analysis (CBA) that includes several benefits related to urban drainage (floods, combined sewer overflows and waste water treatment), environmental impacts (receiving water bodies) and additional societal and environmental benefits associated with GI (air quality improvements, aesthetic values, etc.). Benefits from flood damage reduction are monetized based on the widely used concept of Expected Annual Damage (EAD) that was calculated using a 1D/2D urban drainage model together with design storms and a damage model based on tailored flood depth–damage curves. Benefits from Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO) damage reduction were monetized using a 1D urban drainage model with continuous rainfall simulations and prices per cubic meter of spilled combined sewage water estimated from literature; other societal benefits were estimated using unit prices also estimated from literature. This economic assessment was applied to two different case studies: the Spanish cities of Barcelona and Badalona. The results are useful for decision making and also underline the relevancy of including not only flood damages in CBA of GI.


2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 179-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.B. Boxall ◽  
P.J. Skipworth ◽  
A.J. Saul

Discolouration is one of the biggest causes of customer complaint associated with potable water. The flushing of systems has been widely identified as an appropriate pro-active means of removing material from distribution networks and hence controlling discolouration. Such flushing involves creating aggressive hydraulic forces within the network such that the materials that contribute to discolouration are mobilised and removed. Understanding of the causes and mechanisms leading to discolouration are poor. Previous work has been presented on the characterisation of material and particles collected at hydrants during flushing trials in the UK. From this data it was hypothesised that the materials causing discolouration originated from cohesive layers on pipe walls, and that once disturbed the material is maintained as a permanent suspension even under the most quiescent of networks conditions. The work presented in this paper attempts to validate the hypothesis that the discolouration materials originate from cohesive layers, and investigate the nature and variability of such layers within live distribution systems. The study involved the aggressive flushing of a long discrete length of cast iron pipe with known discolouration problems. The results showed a progressive generation of material over the length of the pipe, confirming that the material originated from a uniformly distributed cohesive source. This was followed by a sequence of flushing operations for the systematic cleaning of a complex network area, encompassing a mixture of pipe materials and ages. All measured turbidity traces showed exponential decay with time. Such exponential decay may be predicted by a model based on a change in layer strength with degree of erosion. Hydraulic forces appear to be a key factor governing the availability and mobilisation of material. Iron is the dominant material mobilised from all the pipes. There is no direct trend between the amount or the composition of the material mobilised from the different pipes.


2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 960-973 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Avesani ◽  
Maurizio Righetti ◽  
Davide Righetti ◽  
Paolo Bertola

This paper describes the modifications applied to EPANET, a public-domain water distribution system modelling software package, that does not correctly compute the hydraulics of a water distribution network (WDN) with variable tank heads in (slow) unsteady flow conditions. Firstly the methodology adopted to extend the Global Gradient Algorithm (GGA) implemented in the original EPANET source code to the Extended Period Simulation-GGA (EPS-GGA) is described. Then the convergence and stability conditions of the theta method, used for the discretisation in time of the set of differential equations describing the hydraulic behaviour of a WDN, are discussed. The reasons for EPS-GGA numerical stability are demonstrated and a fully implicit discretisation of differential equations (i.e. theta = 1) is suggested as the optimal choice as implicitly proposed in Giustolisi et al. but without theoretical justification. Both the modified and original versions of EPANET are applied to a particularly severe test case of a WDN. Moreover, the procedures for the correct numerical representation of the tanks' maximum and minimum level boundary conditions are developed and compared with previously proposed procedures. The modified version of EPANET source code does not show the significant instabilities which are evident in the original version, nor the lack of consistency due to the improper maximum and minimum level boundary condition schematisations formerly proposed in the scientific literature.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonietta Simone ◽  
Francesco G. Ciliberti ◽  
Daniele B. Laucelli ◽  
Luigi Berardi ◽  
Orazio Giustolisi

Abstract Complex network theory (CNT) studies the relevance of elements in networks using centrality metrics. From the CNT standpoint, water distribution networks (WDNs) are infrastructure networks composed by vertices, named nodes, connected to each other by edges, named pipes, that transfer water to customers following a transfer process based on shortest paths. The present paper proposes the domain analysis of several real WDNs using the edge betweenness in order to capture the hydraulic behaviour based on network structure, i.e., for understanding the role of topological features in the emergent hydraulic behaviour. The strategy is obtained by tailoring CNT studies and tools in order to (i) embed the different hydraulic roles of sources and demand nodes, (ii) move the classic concept of centrality from the nodes to the pipes, i.e., the technically relevant components for WDNs and (iii) include information related to the directional devices, because they constrain flow directions. Results show the usefulness of the novel WDN-tailored edge betweenness for the WDN domain analysis. Therefore, the metric can represent a useful tool for supporting WDNs analysis, design and management tasks.


10.29007/gvnz ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armando Di Nardo ◽  
Michele Di Natale ◽  
Anna Di Mauro ◽  
Eva Martínez Díaz ◽  
Jose Antonio Blázquez Garcia ◽  
...  

The recent development and applications of social network theory in many fields of engineering (electricity, gas, transport, water, etc.) allows both the understanding of networks and to improve their management. Social network theory coupled to the availability of real time data and big data analysis techniques can change drastically the traditional approaches to manage civil networks. Recently, some authors are working to apply this novel approach, based on social network theory, on the water distribution networks using: a) graph partitioning algorithms to define optimal district meter areas both for water losses identification and for water network protection, b) innovative topological, energy and hydraulic indices to analyze performance; and c) GIS (Geographical Information System) to provide a more effective display of results and to improve network behavior in specific operational conditions. In this paper, a novel release 3.5 of SWANP software, that implements all these features, was tested on a real large water network in Alcalá de Henares, Spain.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-235
Author(s):  
Muhammad Rizki Apritama ◽  
I Wayan Koko Suryawan ◽  
Yosef Adicita

ABSTRACTThe clean water supply system network on Lengkang Kecil Island was developed in 2019. A small portion of the community's freshwater comes from harvesting rainwater and dug wells, which are only obtained during the rainy season. The primary source of clean water used by the community comes from underwater pipelines with a daily discharge of 0.86 l/sec. The water supply of the Lengkang Kecil Island community is 74.3 m3/day, with 146 House Connections (HCs) and to serve public facilities such as elementary schools, primary health centers, and mosques. Hydraulic evaluation of clean water distribution using EPANET 2.0 software on flow velocity shows the lowest rate of 0.29 m/s and the highest of 1.21 m/s. The lowest pressure value in the distribution system is 6.94-6.96 m and headloss units in the range 0.08-0.25 m/km. These three criteria are still within the distribution network design criteria (feasible). A carbon footprint can be calculated from each activity from the analysis of the evaluation of clean water distribution networks. The most massive emissions came from pumping activities with 131 kg CO2-eq, followed by emissions from wastewater 62.5 kgCO2-eq. Further research is needed to determine the quality of wastewater and the design for a centralized wastewater treatment plant (IPALT) to improve Lengkang Kecil Island residents' living standards.Keywords: Lengkang Kecil Island, water, EPANET, carbon footprintABSTRAKJaringan sistem penyediaan air bersih pada Pulau Lengkang Kecil dimulai pada tahun 2019. Sebagian kecil air bersih yang digunakan masyarakat berasal dari pemanenan air hujan dan sumur gali yang hanya didapat pada musim hujan. Sumber air bersih utama yang digunakan masyarakat berasal dari pengaliran perpipaan bawah laut dengan debit harian 0,86 l/detik. Kebutuhan air masyarakat Pulau Lengkang Kecil adalah 74,3 m3/hari dengan 146 Sambungan Rumah (SR) serta untuk melayani fasilitas umum seperti sekolah dasar (SD), puskesmas, dan masjid. Evaluasi hidrolis distribusi air bersih dengan menggunakan software EPANET 2.0 terhadap kriteria kecepatan aliran menunjukkan nilai terendah 0,29 m/s dan tertinggi 1,21 m/s. Nilai sisa tekan dalam sistem distribusi adalah 6,94–6,96 m dan unit headloss pada kisaran 0,08–0,25 m/km. Ketiga kriteria ini masih berada dalam kriteria desain jaringan distribusi (layak). Dari analisis evaluasi jaringan distribusi air bersih, dapat dihitung jejak karbon yang dihasilkan dari setiap kegiatannya. Emisi terbesar berasal dari kegiatan pemompaan dengan nilai 131 kgCO2-eq, diikuti dengan emisi yang berasal dari air limbah dengan nilai 62,5 kgCO2-eq. Penelitian lanjutan diperlukan untuk mengetahui kualitas dari air limbah dan desain untuk instalasi pengolahan air limbah terpusat (IPALT) untuk meningkatkan taraf hidup penduduk Pulau Lengkang Kecil.Kata kunci: Pulau Lengkang Kecil, air, EPANET, jejak karbon


2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-38
Author(s):  
A. Asakura ◽  
A. Koizumi ◽  
O. Odanagi ◽  
H. Watanabe ◽  
T. Inakazu

In Japan most of the water distribution networks were constructed during the 1960s to 1970s. Since these pipelines were used for a long period, pipeline rehabilitation is necessary to maintain water supply. Although investment for pipeline rehabilitation has to be planned in terms of cost-effectiveness, no standard method has been established because pipelines were replaced on emergency and ad hoc basis in the past. In this paper, a method to determine the maintenance of the water supply on an optimal basis with a fixed budget for a water distribution network is proposed. Firstly, a method to quantify the benefits of pipeline rehabilitation is examined. Secondly, two models using Integer Programming and Monte Carlo simulation to maximize the benefits of pipeline rehabilitation with limited budget were considered, and they are applied to a model case and a case study. Based on these studies, it is concluded that the Monte Carlo simulation model to calculate the appropriate investment for the pipeline rehabilitation planning is both convenient and practical.


1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (9-11) ◽  
pp. 2609-2612
Author(s):  
D.-Th. Kollatsch

The most important task of urban drainage and waste water treatment in the future is the environmental care of rivers and receiving waters. For this it is necessary to have a look at all discharges of sewer systems and treatment facilities. With simulation models the interactions between surface, sewer systems, overflow structures and treatment facilities can be shown. With these models the efficiency of upgrading measures can be proved in all parts of urban water systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 818-826
Author(s):  
Ranjan Kumar Panda ◽  
A. Sai Sabitha ◽  
Vikas Deep

Sustainability is defined as the practice of protecting natural resources for future use without harming the nature. Sustainable development includes the environmental, social, political, and economic issues faced by human being for existence. Water is the most vital resource for living being on this earth. The natural resources are being exploited with the increase in world population and shortfall of these resources may threaten humanity in the future. Water sustainability is a part of environmental sustainability. The water crisis is increasing gradually in many places of the world due to agricultural and industrial usage and rapid urbanization. Data mining tools and techniques provide a powerful methodology to understand water sustainability issues using rich environmental data and also helps in building models for possible optimization and reengineering. In this research work, a review on usage of supervised or unsupervised learning algorithms in water sustainability issues like water quality assessment, waste water collection system and water consumption is presented. Advanced technologies have also helped to resolve major water sustainability issues. Some major data mining optimization algorithms have been compared which are used in piped water distribution networks.


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