Filton Airfield near Bristol has an assured place in British aviation legend. It is where the Bristol 167, the world’s first wide-body passenger aircraft, was developed – and was the home of Concorde in the UK. Several years after its closure, Filton Airfield is set to once again become a home for cutting-edge innovation – but this time in water, rather than air technology.
It is set for redevelopment into a new sustainable housing and business area, where University of Bath expertise will be used to create a hub for the development of sustainable circular economy concepts.
The Filton Airfield Development
The Filton Airfield site was purchased in 2015 by and slated for development by YTL Development UK Ltd, a subsidiary of the multinational YTL Corporation. The £800 million scheme, a new suburb to be named Brabazon, will comprise more than 2,600 new homes and 62 acres of commercial space, as well as new schools, recreation spaces and health facilities.
As the parent company of Wessex Water, YTL is set to place significant focus on the development’s water management capability, and is working with the University of Bath’s Water Innovation and Research Centre (WIRC) to investigate and implement the waste-minimising circular economy practices it will need to appeal to planners and future residents. The large size of the development presents a unique opportunity to fully demonstrate and test these practices.
The NextGen project
The development is part of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 project ‘Towards a Next Generation of Water Systems and Services for the Circular Economy’, or NextGen. This project’s goal is to assess, design and demonstrate a wide range of circular economy concepts that could augment and increase efficiencies in the local water cycle. The project’s focus at Filton will be wide – instead of being limited to demonstrating new technologies for water, nutrient and energy re-use, it will also boost and create new market dynamics, by developing an on-line market place where technology suppliers can offer their new technologies to create circular economy solutions. Project team members will also work with stakeholders and residents to fully understand the practicalities of the circular economy principles and help prepare homeowners to adopt the new behaviours needed to make the system work effectively. The project will also address social and governance questions to ensure long-term adoption and social acceptability of the circular economy.
Professor Jan Hofman, Director of WIRC, explains: “We need to make sure people fully embrace the water systems that will be used at Brabazon. People have to understand how the circular economy system saves money and improves the living environment. Re-using water needs to overcome the yuck-factor and be fully accepted.”
Circular Solutions for Water, Energy and Materials
Water
Although water supply in the Bristol area is sufficient, it is becoming a scarce resource on a national level, so the Filton development presents a key opportunity for nation-wide learning. The UK water sector’s ambitions for the coming decades of reducing water consumption and halving the freshwater abstraction1 to sustainable levels could benefit greatly from planned studies at the Filton development. The water system developed at Brabazon will be focused on re-using water and the use of alternative water sources, such as the collected rainwater. In this way, the amount of freshwater abstracted from the environment can be reduced significantly.
Applying circular economy concepts could be one of the solutions to reducing water abstraction. By re-using water and collecting rainwater for non-potable purposes (toilet flushing, washing machine use, or in garden hosepipes and sprinklers), the amount of water being taken from freshwater sources could be reduced.
As the Brabazon community will be entirely new, it offers great opportunities to create a different future-proof water system. Plans include collecting rainwater the huge 10,000 m2 roof of the YTL Arena, a new concert and events venue planned as part of the scheme, as well as the roof surfaces of the new homes. Because water demand is constant and rainfall is generally unpredictable, storage capacity will be created on and around the site, including in green spaces in the Filton area.
Using water ponds and streams in parks integrated in the residential areas could also create a water treatment system to improve water quality before use. Additional storage could be created in underground aquifers, a technology already demonstrated at one of the other NextGen project sites in the Westland region in the Netherlands.
Energy
“An often-overlooked aspect of the water cycle is energy usage and wastage,” says Prof Hofman. “The use of hot water accounts for 30-50% of UK energy bills, and yet the heat from a bath or shower literally flows down the drain afterward, and is finally dissipated and lost in the environment.”
In the Filton Airfield case, options for recovering the heat from the sewers will be explored. As sewer heat is low-grade energy, it cannot be transported over long distances, but could be re-used in the local area, for instance for heating of a swimming pool or a shopping centre. The Filton scheme, comprising mixed-use development, will be well-placed to explore heat recovery options – for example, the size of the development will deliver sufficient energy to be used for space heating in schools or public buildings. Additionally, options to use heat from the air-conditioning and cooling system of the YTL Arena may allow further energy recapture.
Materials
Wastewater contains valuable materials, such as nutrients which can be recovered as fertiliser. A study will also be carried out to explore the potential of material recovery within the development. Under the current circumstances, it is expected that the wastewater will be transported to and treated at the Avonmouth Sewage Treatment Works, where biogas is produced at a large scale.
The Water Innovation and Research Centre at Bath
The Water Innovation and Research Centre (WIRC) at the University of Bath will support YTL Development in the NextGen project. WIRC will provide knowledge and expertise to design and potentially implement the water and energy recovery systems. WIRC will also perform the materials recovery study. Moreover, WIRC will be responsible for the energy assessments of the 10 demonstration cases in the NextGen project and provide input to the water and materials assessments of the new circular economy demos.
More information: www.netgenwater.eu, www.ytldevelopments.co.uk, Professor Jan Hofman (j.a.h.hofman@bath.ac.uk)
UKWIR 12 Big Questions, https://ukwir.org/eng/big-questions-facing-uk-water-industry
