Scottish Water puts perspective on its greenhouse gases

TECHNOLOGY UPDATE

Scottish Water is using a proprietary gas composition monitoring system which it anticipates will enable it to make greater reductions in greenhouse gases released from its wastewater treatment plants.

The water company is deploying a system that identifies, locates and measures individual gases from the mixtures emitted from wastewater treatment by separating out their characteristic absorptions of infrared radiation. The system, developed by German company, Grandperspective, can analyse greenhouse gas emissions from the entire land area of wastewater treatment.

Scottish Water said its focus will be to use Scanfeld to establish its baseline emissions for nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide at its wastewater treatment works but also to identify where in the plants it is releasing its greenhouse gases “and therefore mitigate these emissions faster.” It has deployed Scanfield at a works near Glasgow and has claimed it to be a first in the UK – currently the industry uses point source emissions monitoring which provides only a localised understanding of emissions.

The company said its 1800 wastewater treatment plants are a known greenhouse gas emissions source but, identifying, quantifying and locating the sources of their emissions is a big challenge.

The use of Scanfield emerged from Scottish Water’s research and innovation programme, the Hydro Nation Chair. It said it hoped the technology will provide, “more granularity on the types of emissions, the quantities and sources so that they can further refine their process emissions strategy and approach in order to go beyond Net Zero by 2040.”