Josh Ellis
Temporary pipes to drain groundwater from the many, many, many construction sites in Berlin.
For the week of April 22-26, MPC's Josh Ellis is on a tour of water, wastewater, and stormwater industries and utilities with the German American Chamber of Commerce's Midwest office. Stopping in Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt, the group is attending trade shows, visiting treatment plants, swinging by Hamburg City Hall, and more. Today, Josh weighs in from the Wasser Berlin International trade show.
I'm glad lots of people seem to have been enjoying the photos I've been posting on MPC's Facebook page, as well as my initial efforts at this thing called Twitter (yep, that's me @MPCJosh). Berlin's been amazing thus far. There are so many cranes, and so much building going on. The former demilitarized zone between East and West Berlin is one big construction project, the federal government and city are investing heavily in the riverfront, and there are these crazy purple pipes running overhead all over the place (the water table is high, so water is pumped out of the ground at construction sites and released somewhere, I'll find out where tomorrow. The transit system is amazing, and easily navigated, even in a foreign language. There is care, detail and planning put into everything, which I appreciate.
Today, however, we finally got down to brass tacks. The Wasser Berlin International is one of Germany's largest trade show/conferences for firms supplying utilities and industry with water, wastewater and stormwater solutions. The German American Chamber of Commerce's Midwest office (out of Chicago) set up our tour, and the German Water Partnership hosted us today. We kicked things off with presentations from a diverse group of German firms, and I found three of them very compelling:
PillAerator makes blowers for aerating wastewater, which is an important part of the treatment process. That in itself is not so amazing, as many firms make blowers. PillAerator's, however, run on magnetic bearings - an electrical current forces a turbine to spin, with no moving parts ever actually coming in contact. No wear and tear, no oil. The system can go from 0 to 30,000 RPM in two seconds, and stop in just as much time. Why does that matter? It means that treatment facilities can manage their energy usage much more nimbly, because they turn on and turn off the blowers very readily, and get to a high level of performance very quickly. When there is a lot of wastewater in the system, dial it up and away you go, when there is less, dial it down and reap efficiency savings. I thought it was pretty cool.
Also pretty cool was a presentation from 3S Antriebe, a firm that makes wireless systems for smart valves on water, sewer, gas, and district heating mains. A lot of manholes exisit to allow workers to climb down and open or shut valves (and do some other things). That's obviously a labor-intensive effort, which comes at a price. But when mains break, you need to close valves to isolate the breaks and control loss. 3S Antriebe connects these valves to a wireless network, and ultimately right to an app on your phone. Essentially, if there's a main break, it sends you a message, you tell the valve to close, and it closes remotely. This is just one way we can build smarter, more resilient infrastructure to withstand extreme weather events. Pretty slick.
But slicker still was DB Sediments. A problem with dams is that they cause sedimentation on the upstream side (which reduces the storage capacity of the reservoir the dam was built to create), and erosion on the downstream side (water without sediment will generally move faster, with pronounced wave action, which erodes riverbanks more quickly). Worldwide, all investment in new reservoirs in the last 20 years hasn't added any actual storage, because it's been offset by losses due to sedimentation. Sediment is also a source of nutrients, so it's often the case that the areas downstream of dams will have a severely limited ecosystem. This has led to a whole lot of dam decommissioning and deconstruction, as the cost of dredging out the reservoir on a regular basis is quite high, as is the cost of restoring riverbanks on the downstream side. The problem with removing dams is that you lose the benefits of the dam - typically the water supply storage in the reservoir and power production. DB Sediments has developed an extremely inexpensive means of reducing both sedimentation and erosion, while maintaining the benefits from the dam itself.
Sedimentation happens because the dam changes the flow regime in the river, basically by slowing the flow of water. However, water still flows through the dam, and at the point where the water passes through the dam, the velocity picks back up again. DB Sediments has developed a means of getting the sediment from the point at which it settled to the point at which the water flow is once again sufficient to move it through the dam, and thus to other side where it can help manage erosion. They build what are essentially vacuum systems you might see in a swimming pool. Running on a cable grid hanging above the water, these vacuums collect sediments and release them where the water will move them. It's that simple. It greatly extends the lifespan of the dam and maintains the power and water supply benefits. In pilot projects in Olsberg, Germany, within four weeks signs of life had returned to the area downstream of the dam. Sediment transfer is a part of nature, and hugely important to the health of downstream deltas, but power production and water supply management are pretty important too. DB Sediment just might be on to something that allows us to have both.
All in all, an interesting day. Tomorrow we meet with the Berlin water utility, and then are off to Hamburg!