Southern Water has announced it has installed an innovative new membrane biological reactor (MBR) in Southampton.
As part of the redevelopment of its multi-million pound Woolston treatment works in Southampton, the water company has installed a ‘space-age’ MBR filtration system to treat wastewater on site.
This new ultra-filtration system will remove nearly 100 per cent of all bacteria and solids, ensuring any water released from the treatment works into the environment meet strict EU Bathing Water directive relating to bacteria counts for E.coli and Intestinal Enterococci.
The membrane is so large it could almost stretch from Southampton to Houston, Texas – home to the famous Nasa Space Centre.
Southern Water Project Manager, Richard Hodgson, said: “The MBR is one of many innovative and technologically advanced improvements made at Woolston to ensure the resilience of the wastewater treatment works lasts long into the future.
“This ensures Southern Water maintains its obligations to the Environment Agency and continues on the journey of providing our customers the most efficient and effective wastewater treatment works at Woolston. The MBR is an innovative use of the advancing technology of ultra-filtration and biological treatment.”
Now for the science bit. The MBR is made up of an eight-lane structure, each lane contains five modules. These modules contain 36 rows each with eight bundles and each bundle contains 336 two-meter long membrane fibres.
The Woolston MBR has 3.87million membrane fibres, with a length of over 7741km. This length is only 15km short of the distance from Southampton to Houston, Texas!
The ultra-filtration is carried out by passing the wastewater over the 3.87million membrane fibres and using pumps to draw the wastewater through its pores. It then uses a special system known as PULSION – which passes a bubble or ‘pulse’ of air up through the membrane fibres, constantly removing any accumulated sludge out of the modules.
Chemical cleaning cycles are then carried out every couple of days to limit microbiological growth on the membranes.
The redevelopment scheme at Woolston is scheduled to finish in September 2019.
