Small community relies on UV for safe drinking water and wastewater treatment

For the Fetherston Park mobile home community in Eastern Ontario, UV Pure disinfection systems provided the best combination of protection, performance, and low maintenance at a price that the small community can afford.

Two Hallett 30 systems were installed in 2006 to upgrade the community’s drinking water system to meet provincial standards. The engineer selected UV Pure systems for primary disinfection because the systems are effective even for mineral-rich well water—unlike conventional “light-in-a-pipe” UV systems that can foul quickly and require frequent shutdowns for cleaning.

When the Park’s wastewater system was re-built in 2015, Clearford decided to incorporate dual Hallett 30 units for chemical-free disinfection of the treated effluent to make the water safe for discharging to a nearby ditch. A new membrane bioreactor (MBR) treatment plant was constructed with advanced technologies for treating the effluent to very high standards. All of the mechanical equipment is housed in a single 40-foot shipping container that is capable of treating 16,000 US gallons per day (60 cubic metres per day). Clearford’s MBR plant is designed with fit, functionality and reliability in mind—and UV Pure systems complement that approach.

“We’re confident that the UV Pure Hallett systems will provide continuous, uninterrupted disinfection with very little maintenance requirements. This lets us provide the best possible service to the residents of Fetherston and consistently meet regulatory requirements while maintaining low lifecycle costs.”

~ Kevin Hall, Project Engineer for Clearford

The site operators appreciate that UV Pure systems have easy lamp changes, remote monitoring, and an automatic cleaning system that prevents the accumulation of scale and biofouling inside the quartz sleeve, eliminating the need for time-consuming manual cleaning. Furthermore, operators avoid the risks of shipping, storing and handling toxic chlorine for disinfection.

Image: ‘Fetherston park saga comes to an end’ article, InsideOttawaValley.com

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Financial building banks on UV protection against Legionella in plumbing

Major outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease struck the Netherlands in 1999 and 2006, affecting the health of over 200 people. As a result, the Dutch government now requires all public buildings to conduct a risk analysis for Legionella and to implement a prevention and control plan. A financial building in Amsterdam found that the Legionella bacteria posed a threat to the building occupants—so the building managers acted quickly to find a solution that would ensure reliable protection.

Best Air Choice, a local clean air and water specialist, recommended and installed a UV Pure Upstream system in the basement where the water supply enters the building. All of the building’s plumbing was disinfected with ozonated water to minimize any risk of bacterial regrowth in the UV-treated water supplied by the UV system. Since commissioning of the system, the building consistently reports non-detectable levels of Legionella bacteria.

Best Air Choice identified UV Pure disinfection systems as the best technology to reduce the risk of Legionella and other waterborne pathogens in public potable water systems. The systems’ advanced Crossfire Technology provides a greater disinfection dose over a short path length than conventional “light-in-a-pipe” UV systems and consistently provides 4-log (99.99%) removal of Legionella as well as other potentially harmful bacteria, cysts and viruses.

“UV Pure’s Crossfire Technology is unique in the Dutch market. There are no other products that match the performance and reliability these systems offer.”

~ Arie Brals, of Best Air Choice

The company has been installing and servicing UV Pure systems in public buildings throughout the country and says their customers are extremely pleased that the systems consistently achieve the targeted reduction of Legionella bacteria while being simple to operate and maintain.

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Decentralized wastewater treatment protects a sensitive marine environment

Instead of building conventional septic systems for 15 new town-homes, a developer has installed a state-of-the-art Aquapoint moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) treatment system with chemical-free ultraviolet disinfection to reduce nutrient loading and improve water quality for a sensitive bay in Cataumet, Massachusetts.

The Cataumet Wastewater Treatment Plant will also replace the existing septic system for a nearby marina, and has capacity to provide treatment for up to 65 neighbouring homes whose septic systems are suspected of contributing to poor water quality and algae blooms in the bay.

Treated effluent from the underground MBBR process tanks is pumped up to a small control building where the flow is split to two Hallett 30 systems for disinfection. The compact design and vertical installation of the Hallett systems was critical for maximizing the limited space in the control building. The Hallett systems handle flow up to 60 gpm (227 L/min) with UV transmittance (UVT) as low as 65%, and consistently achieve fecal coliform levels less than 1 MPN/100 mL—far below the regulated target level of 200 MPN/100 mL (where MPN is the most probable number of coliforms).

“Many Aquapoint systems are equipped with UV Pure disinfection technology, which has proven itself to be the most cost effective, reliable and simple to use UV system that we’ve come across. The automatic, self-cleaning system is very reliable in maintaining clarity in the quartz sleeve. We rarely, if ever, have to manually clean a quartz sleeve.”

~ Josh Lindell, President of Aquapoint

Aquapoint also operates and maintains many of these sites and says the UV Pure systems provide significant savings in time and cost of ongoing operation. UVT, UV intensity and dose are monitored continuously via 4-20 mA outputs that are connected to the PLC system. If any parameters are out of specification, the system automatically notifies the operator who can perform a quick diagnostic to identify and troubleshoot the problem.

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Algoma Orchards achieves water self-reliance with reliable onsite treatment

In 2009, Algoma Orchards opened a 165,000-square foot production facility in Ontario that packages annually over 36 million kilograms of apples for wholesale, presses nearly 4 million litres of juice, produces a variety of baked goods and gourmet foods for up to 90,000 visitors per year at its retail store.

The new facility was built to be self-reliant for its water needs with onsite potable water treatment for the bakery and visitors, plus state-of-the-art rainwater harvesting and membrane bioreactor (MBR) treatment for the reuse of process greywater.

Not long after opening, the facility began experiencing frequent shutdowns in its water supply caused by alarms from the conventional “light-in-a-pipe” UV disinfection systems that were experiencing biofouling of the quartz sleeves and sensor malfunctions.

After years of struggling with poor performance, Algoma Orchards started by replacing the conventional UV system for potable water disinfection with two new Upstream NC 10-75 units. The benefits were realized immediately in the bakery and retail store, as the systems put an end to the inconvenience of water shutdowns for patrons.

“We were constantly shutting down and manually cleaning our previous UV systems. At one point, we were cleaning the systems daily with each one taking about an hour to disassemble, clean and reassemble. Now, the UV Pure systems have been operating for about a year and we haven’t had to perform any manual cleanings. The self-cleaning mechanism is doing its job to keep the quartz sleeves clean, avoid alarms and prevent shutdowns.”

~ Ken Ferguson, Operations Manager at Algoma Orchards

The reliability and low maintenance of the UV Pure systems with Crossfire Technology prompted replacement of the other conventional UV system several months later with an Upstream NC 15-75 for the facility’s rainwater harvesting and MBR system that recycles treated process water from the apple flume, apple washing, bottle washing, pressing and filling equipment.

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Singapore housing development installs 78 UV systems for rainwater harvesting

An innovative rainwater harvesting system equipped with UV Pure disinfection allows residents at a new luxury housing development in Singapore to dramatically reduce potable water demand and contribute to the island nation’s goal of water self-sufficiency.

The systems were designed and installed by local UV Pure representative Netatech to capture, store and treat rainwater to a high standard that is safe for on-site landscape irrigation. Each of the 78 housing units is equipped with its own fully automated, chemical-free rainwater harvesting and disinfection system that can be managed by the homeowners. The systems will collectively help reduce potable water demand in the complex by an estimated 233,600 cubic metres (61.7 million US gallons) of water per year, alongside other water savings initiatives.

Rainwater is abundant in Singapore and our clients demand an efficient, easy-to-use harvesting and treatment system that can take full advantage of this resource. When designing this system, we compared alternatives such as chlorine and ultrafiltration membranes, but ultimately selected the UV Pure Upstream® system for its chemical-free operation, low maintenance requirements and energy efficiency.

~ Daniel Wong, Technology Innovation Officer for Netatech

Each treatment system includes a skid-mounted UV Pure unit in a dedicated outdoor compartment outside the house. Rainwater from each property is collected by gravity in a 700-litre (180-gallon) tank that passes through a pre-treatment screen filter and 5-micron cartridge filter. Disinfection is performed by an Upstream NC 10-75 unit that provides up to 33 litres per minute (9 gallons per minute) of clean water to supplement household water use.

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Rainwater transformed into safe drinking water for livestock at Ohio, USA farm

Inadequate groundwater supplies prompted Cooper Farms in Ohio to begin harvesting and reusing rainwater in 2009 as a supplement to its potable supply for livestock drinking water and to reduce its demand on the local groundwater system.

The farm started exploring options to implement a multi-barrier treatment process with disinfection that could provide reliable, safe water. Rainwater can acquire numerous contaminants and pathogens as it is collected, so treating it to potable water quality standards is essential for preventing disease outbreaks and death among livestock.

Cooper Farms installed a treatment system that includes chemical-free UV Pure disinfection for its ability to handle low UV transmittance (UVT) water quality, a typical characteristic of the rainwater that is collected and stored in a retention pond at the site.

A small amount of well water is pumped into a retention pond, which is supplemented by harvested rainwater. The blended stream first passes through a microfiltration system that uses a specialized five-micron filter to remove organics, and then the filtered water is dosed with chlorine.

“Even after pond water is filtered, UVT can still be quite low, so the ability to consistently deliver a high UV dose under these conditions was a very important consideration for us when selecting UV Pure’s system with Crossfire Technology for this application,”

~ Brad Longberry, CEO of Flag City Water Systems, a local UV Pure representative.

Some pathogens like Cryptosporidium, Giardia, and Legionella are resistant to chlorine, so UV disinfection was added as a second layer of protection to enhance the treatment system’s reliability for preventing disease outbreak. Final disinfection is performed by a variable-flow UV Pure system consisting of four Upstream NC 15-50 reactors sized to handle flows from 15 to 60 gpm (57 to 227 L/min) with UVT as low as 50%.

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Mitchell’s Ice Cream chooses UV Pure for low-maintenance disinfection of rainwater

In 2018, a new rainwater harvesting system with UV Pure disinfection was installed at Mitchell’s Ice Cream in Strongsville, Ohio by UV Pure’s local representative, Rain Brothers.

Mitchell’s Ice Cream is one of the largest ice cream companies in Ohio with a fully integrated production facility. It offers over 35 flavours of hand-crafted ice cream along with a variety of pies, gourmet cakes and fresh fruit smoothies.

The onsite rainwater treatment process reduces demand on local water resources and provides a sustainable supply of water for landscape irrigation. Water is first collected in a 5,500 gallon (21,000 litre) precast concrete rainwater harvesting tank that feeds into a two-stage pre-treatment system. The pre-treatment includes a 20-micron melt-blown poly filter and five-micron carbon block filter that are housed in a five-cartridge stainless steel housing. The final step in the water treatment process is ultraviolet disinfection by a UV Pure Upstream NC 10-50 system.

The UV Pure system is compact, low-maintenance and very easy to use. It is much easier to maintain than the conventional UV disinfection system we installed a few years ago at the Mitchell’s Ice Cream main production facility in Cleveland, Ohio. The system we installed at that location turned out to be very high maintenance because it had to be taken apart every month to be cleaned. We took this into consideration when designing a rainwater harvesting system for their location in Strongsville.

~ Jonathan Meier, co-owner of Rain Brothers

Each UV Pure system is equipped with an automatic, self-cleaning wiper mechanism that prevents mineral deposits from accumulating on the quartz sleeve and dramatically reduces maintenance duties for operators. Maintaining a clean quartz sleeve is essential to achieve the highest possible UV dose for optimum disinfection performance and to avoid unnecessary alarms and system shutdowns.

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Home treatment systems deliver safe water to First Nation community

A pilot program is demonstrating the benefits of point-of-entry (POE) treatment and UV disinfection to bring affordable, safe drinking water to the First Nation community of Alderville, Ontario.

The project, led by the Canadian unit of Arcadis, an international engineering design consultancy firm based in the Netherlands, provides a complete multi-barrier POE water treatment system for each of the 33 homes in the community to improve water quality and protect residents from waterborne pathogens.

Shed for water treatment system The treatment systems are designed to produce potable water that meets Ontario drinking water standards. Each residential POE system is installed outside of the home in an insulated, heated enclosure that combines water softening and filtration with an easy-to-operate Hallett UV disinfection system. A private well provides source water at each home, but water quality varies with groundwater levels, soil conditions, and mineral hardness.

The POE approach eliminates the need to build a central treatment plant and a network of distribution pipes to serve the entire community. The installation of distribution pipes would have added significant economic and engineering challenges to this project since many of the homes are separated by several kilometres.

“We selected UV Pure Hallett systems for this project because they are simple to use, require very little maintenance and are certified to the NSF/ANSI 55 Class A standard. The automatic cleaning system has prevented buildup of minerals on the quartz sleeves, which means we haven’t had to perform any manual cleanings in over a year of operation.”

~ Yousry Hamdy, Manager of Water and Wastewater for Arcadis Canada

Annual lamp changes are the only maintenance that the operator has performed on the systems since commissioning in October 2015. The Hallett systems are also equipped with 4-20 mA monitoring and smart sensors that provide continuous logging of UV intensity, net UV transmittance, and dose. Alarms notify the local operator and shut down the system to prevent residents from using the water.