Water tankers

[ChiefPlanner]

You'd be surprised at how much water needs to be pumped out of the London Underground system - just pray that the next time there is a big trains stranded for hours incident that the pumps don't trip out as well...

Plus Merseyside where the rising water levels due to the reduction in industry abstraction , caused problems on the loop and link.

Chipping Sodbury tunnel is another one which has significant water pumped out and away.

Anyway - there is no economic chance of rail hauled bulk water IMHO .......

 

[jp4712]

As someone who worked for Severn Trent in a management position for 11 years, I think I have an insight on this issue...

Firstly, desalination. Forget it. The cost is appalling, the environmental cost is very high (the energy use is massive, Saudi only do it because they have cheap oil and it's basically their only option) and the water is not FULLY desalinated so to us it would taste disgusting. If you're not sure what the definition of 'fully desalinated' means, hark back to the time at school when you had a to dilute a solution to a tenth, then dilute that to a tenth, then again, and you could still taste the salt or urea compound. So in other words, getting that last few parts per million of salt out of the water is ridiculously expensive, so it's impractical to do so in a way that leaves the water tasting anything like what you're used to.

Secondly, tankers - by road or rail. Water is very unsuitable for bulk transportation in this way, it's very heavy and the cost per cubic metre just isn't worth the hassle - particularly given that if the water is treated (ie meant for drinking) you have to take special hygiene precautions for the tanker and the mechanism you use to transfer water to/from the tank. Water companies DO use road tankers from time to time, when there's no option, but as a general distribution system it's a non-starter.

Thirdly, leakage. Water mains leak, that's a fact. Water companies would prefer them not to, but they do. The UK has, with no exaggeration, hundreds of thousands of miles of pipe laid in the ground (some of it laid a long time ago). That ground moves through subsidence, the ground freezes or dries out depending on the weather, the stuff INSIDE the pipe starts to freeze and therefore expand in a cold snap, and unlike your average industrial oil pipeline that's kept flowing at an even rate the flow can be anything from virtually nothing at 3.30 am to full-pelt at 6.00 pm, further stressing the system. And given that you can't see the pipes underground, it's not a surprise that leaks happen.

Now, if water was the same price as bottled poncy mineral stuff, you'd say that if you're losing 10% then it's cost-effective to pay lots of people to get in the wagon with picks and shovels and find the leaks and fix them. But in fact mains water is dead cheap - so what is better value, spend money on more repair gangs or shove in slightly more water knowing that you're going to lose a bit on the way? There's no 'right' answer to that one, it's a balanec to enable the lowest water bills and having hundreds of gangs going out chasing every single leak is not the most cost-effective way of doing it.

Fourthly, using water from tube tunnels. Forget it. It's contaminated, it's not in the right place, it's hard to extract centrally and distribute. Not all water is suitable for treating, and tunnel flows fall right into that category.

Lastly, harking back to the first point on salty water, you have to remember that unlike electricity, 'water' is not simply 'water'. There's hard water, soft water, water with different characteristics of dissolved minerals or dissolved oxygen. When I worked at Severn Trent, there was (I'm sure there still is) a pipeline connecting the system at Coventry down towards Strensham (site of the services on the M5). The flow was normally in one direction, south from Coventry, but when necessary that flow could be reversed to help out if Cov was a bit short. When that happened, we were always inundated from residents of Coventry complaining that their water 'tasted funny' or was 'off'. Water quality is a funny thing, you would want and expect all the usual standards to apply such as not having bugs in the water, but so much is subjective about taste, odour and even colour (yes, in Stoke on Trent they are used to having water that's a different 'tint' to Gloucester!).

So on this topic it's easy to be a Clarkson-esque "How hard can it be" armchair critic but to be honest if the answers were easy they'd have been done by now.

Paul

PS I'm not an apologist for the industry, I left in 2002, but I knew a lot of colleagues who worked very hard and wanted to do the right thing by the community. Saying that 'all water workers are lazy and stupid' (not on this thread, but elsewhere on the internet) is just as wrong as saying 'all rail staff are lazy and stupid'.

 

[caliwag]

Interesting to hear an industry view.

Whilst pipelines were being discussed the oher day on R4, and the fact that, aside from the tens of billions of cost, with the effects of global warming they might actually not start or finish in the right places in a few years time.

It occurred to me that bulk rail transport could surely be a way forward...6000 ton dedicated tanker trains, top and tailed with class 92s, and more wind genrators on railway land...a green system.

10 dedicated trains, 2 turns a train in 24 hours, and you move 90 mega litres a day (and/or overnight). Now even if all that lot needs to be purpose built it must be cheaper than a dedicated pipeline, with all its nimby planning issues, and which may even be in the wrong place when complete!

I understand that the SE needs 800 m/l a day but with a combination of serious water saving (and I don't mean not running the cold water whilst brushing yer teeth...I stopped doing that in 1976 when advocated by FOE) and leekage improvement, the two figures might converge.

Or build 20 trains etc etc...look at all the dedicated coal/biomass trains feeding Drax...22 trains in 24 hours!?

Jim

 

[Chris M]

Regarding not all water being suitable for treating, is is possible to use the non-treated water for things that don't require it to be suitable for human consumption, and use the treatable water that would otherwise have gone to that use for humans?

I vaguely remember seeing a documentary about somewhere in the Californian(?) desert that had invested in reusing "grey water" for things other than human consumption (e.g. flushing the toilet). How feasible is something like that for the UK?

 

[WatcherZero]

Also what about reed bed treating of the 'near drinkable' water, costly in land terms as it runs through three tiers of reed beds so would still need to be piped long distances from locations where cheap land was available but the process is cheap and highly effective. (reed bed plant near where I live treated old mine run off that was bright orange to the point it was drinkable). You just have to keep frequently replacing the first tier reeds, more occasionally the second tier and almost never the third tier.

I vaguely remember seeing a documentary about somewhere in the Californian(?) desert that had invested in reusing "grey water" for things other than human consumption (e.g. flushing the toilet). How feasible is something like that for the UK?

Theres usually two classes or waste water, ground water from storm drains and surface run off which can be reused with a little treatment and sewer water thats been used by humans or industrial uses which cant.

 

[merlodlliw]

Regarding not all water being suitable for treating, is is possible to use the non-treated water for things that don't require it to be suitable for human consumption, and use the treatable water that would otherwise have gone to that use for humans?

I vaguely remember seeing a documentary about somewhere in the Californian(?) desert that had invested in reusing "grey water" for things other than human consumption (e.g. flushing the toilet). How feasible is something like that for the UK?

Non treated water for industry was used at as Factory I worked at in the 70s,it was a separate supply.

At Coed Llandegla visitor centre next door to me, they harvest water from the wooden roofs for the w/cs, problem is it is discoloured,grey/brownish, and 99% flush the wc before using it, so half goes to waste.

Like Kielder no shortage of water here, all reservoirs full.

 

[jp4712]

Regarding not all water being suitable for treating, is is possible to use the non-treated water for things that don't require it to be suitable for human consumption, and use the treatable water that would otherwise have gone to that use for humans?

This was being talked about in the 1990s, but it's only feasible in some circumstances for big industrial customers. The basic problem is that you'd need two of everything; two sets of water mains down every street, one 'white' water (as we called it) and one 'grey'. (Just for completeness, there was talk in 1999 about us providing 'silver' water, i.e. VERY highly treated water, to a limited number of indutrial customers who might want very pure water). The economics of that don't make sense. If we had nothing now and we were starting from scratch, then maybe; but the capital expenditure required at the water source, in the road and in the home would take literally a hundred years to pay for itself.

I understand the case that caliwag is making about 6000 tonne trains, but the three problems are 1) a pipeline is expensive, but once it's in it's virtually free to operate, whereas a train is high in operational ongoing cost; 2) the need to put in place hygiene precautions, and the total nightmare that water quality requirements would represent; and 3) rail terminals aren't generally found next to reservoirs or water treatment works, so you double or triple handle all that high-weight, low value commodity that somehow has to be kept in tip-top condition.

Just to give you a silly example, to be compliant treatede water has to be kept within a certain temperature at all times up to the home; don't quote me, but I think the upper limit was 15 or 16 degrees. What if the water train gets stuck in a sidings for a couple of hours on a baking hot day? Will you use insulated tankers, reducing the capacity and increasing the capex cost by a third?

Paul

 

[Chris M]

The obvious armchair solution to the hygiene issues is to transport untreated water. Surely that's what's in reservoirs given they're open to the elements?

 

[caliwag]

Interesting Paul. I wasn't aware of temp needs, but I assume continental and road tanker design must be pretty advanced.

Have to say that I understood that the cost of pumping water around pipelines is expensive, but I suppose could be wind powered too. I leave it to DB to work out the build costs of 20 times 6000 ton trains and all other subsidies/ access etc. Just seems to me to be worth exploring. But thanks Paul, industry experience is a good start for 'finger-in-wind' thinking!

 

[michael769]

One thing to point out is that wind power is not a magical solution to cost and "green issues"

Firstly wind power is frighteningly expensive compared to conventional power stations - the output of a wind turbine is minuscule compared to a conventional power station - meaning you do not get the economies of scale you get building and maintaining huge multi-gigawatt turbo-alternators, instead you have lots of smaller generators each of which requires similar levels of maintenance to one very large one. They take up a lot of land, granted in some cases the land can be used for other purposes - but those uses are limited and severely impaired) and land is expensive. And it's not just a case of once they are up they are free - they are very prone to damage (40% of Scotland's turbines are out of use due to damage sustained in the winter gales, all of which will cost money to fix despite not having generated any revenue for weeks now) and maintenance costs good money. Currently "green" energy comes at a stiff premium that we are all paying in our bills.

They are also not very green. Although generation produces no pollution the manufacturing and maintenance process do. But beyond that they have a severe impact on the natural environment, killing wildlife altering habitats and disrupting tourism and farming. All forms of energy generation have their environmental costs of course, but those who see wind as "green" are simply being misled - all "green" energy does is shift environmental impact from one mechanism to another.

Finally they are very unreliable as a power source, last winter (2010-11) was not only one of the coldest, but one of the calmest for decades which the wind turbines standing idle for weeks on end right when our power needs were at their greatest - when it comes to using them to pump water consider that atmospheric conditions that lead to drought also lead to very low wind. Even in a windy winter like this one has been up North things are not that much better - in very high winds the turbines have to be shut down to prevent damage (remember the pictures from last November of the unit on fire?) - meaning they don't produce power then either. In reality wind turbines need the wind to be "just right" which in our unpredictable and variable climate is not as often as you would think.

In summary using wind to power the moving of water around the county would only make an already affordable proposal ruinously expensive.

 

[DownSouth]

I have always considered bottled water to be a complete rip off, in many instances especially in Wrexham Dee Valley area, the water is far purer out of the tap, than pay £1 for half a pint in a plastic bottle.
I recall Coca Colas venture into bottled water using Thames Water Company taps.

The reason that bottled drinking water is expensive is because you're not buying the water, you're buying the convenience of having the water in the bottle at the present time. The value for money starts to make a lot more sense when it's a 35°C day, you're at a cricket match, you've gone all the way through the bottles you brought from home and there's still a couple of hours left. Or in an example talked about on this forum, it's a hot day and you have people inside a delayed train starting to suffer from heat exhaustion which can be fatal.

I vaguely remember seeing a documentary about somewhere in the Californian(?) desert that had invested in reusing "grey water" for things other than human consumption (e.g. flushing the toilet). How feasible is something like that for the UK?

Theres usually two classes or waste water, ground water from storm drains and surface run off which can be reused with a little treatment and sewer water thats been used by humans or industrial uses which cant.

Grey water is about intercepting the wasted water before it leaves the property and enters the sewer system. It is named so because it refers to water used for washing that looks a little grey with the detergent and liberated grot, as opposed to brown water from the kitchen or toilet.

Grey water collection can be as simple as putting a bucket on the shower floor so a decent amount of water is collected there, or connecting a longer hose to the washing machine's outlet with the other end in the garden or a tank of some kind. More sophisticated separate pipe systems can also be arranged so that the collected water can be plumbed back into other systems.

The last time we had restrictions for gardening water use here in South Australia, we managed to get our garden through the hot summer looking quite good. All it took was a good combination of grey water (from the washing machine) and rainwater (from the second tank we had) to keep the lawns looking good.

Also what about reed bed treating of the 'near drinkable' water, costly in land terms as it runs through three tiers of reed beds so would still need to be piped long distances from locations where cheap land was available but the process is cheap and highly effective. (reed bed plant near where I live treated old mine run off that was bright orange to the point it was drinkable). You just have to keep frequently replacing the first tier reeds, more occasionally the second tier and almost never the third tier.

Wetlands filtering is wonderful as long as you have the space, which makes it more easily applicable stormwater where it's already been channelled into creeks and rivers. Reclaimed stormwater that's gone through a single wetland is easily good enough to be used in place of mains water for tasks like watering parks, toilets and washing cars/buses/trains. Adelaide has a purpose-built pipeline for this, leading from a point downstream of the last wetlands before the coast to the city, which supplies water to all the city's park areas including even the world-renowned playing surface at the legendary Adelaide Oval.

 

[caliwag]

M769...thanks. I suppose I'm not really fighting the wind gen cause. I recently read that one of the freight companies had erected 3 turbines on railway land to feed into the grid, which ultimately powers class 92s etc. Whether the sums add up I'm not in a position to tell...I guess one set of figures stacked uo over say a 25 year period.
Interestingly I also recently read that many gas power stations are being mothballed, (reduced energy demand due to recession and high cost of gas import) in favour of coal!...now 43% of electricity generation.

O the other side of the coin, a few seasons back in Spain, wind accounted for 20% of the country's electricity needs. No doubt a rare combination of 'good' wind, reduced demand, and some problems with conventional stations.

Sure, this has got not a lot to do with pushing water about the place, but just some thoughts on which to ponder!

Jim

 

[HSTEd]

As someone who worked for Severn Trent in a management position for 11 years, I think I have an insight on this issue...

Firstly, desalination. Forget it. The cost is appalling, the environmental cost is very high (the energy use is massive, Saudi only do it because they have cheap oil and it's basically their only option) and the water is not FULLY desalinated so to us it would taste disgusting. If you're not sure what the definition of 'fully desalinated' means, hark back to the time at school when you had a to dilute a solution to a tenth, then dilute that to a tenth, then again, and you could still taste the salt or urea compound. So in other words, getting that last few parts per million of salt out of the water is ridiculously expensive, so it's impractical to do so in a way that leaves the water tasting anything like what you're used to.

Modern Reverse Osmosis and Multi Stage Flash plants are so good at removing salts that the salts have to be added back in afterwards because they produce water that is far too corrosive for any reasonable use. (the lack of buffering ions in solution causes the water to become quite a corrosive agent, it dissolves your pipes instead).
These systems can produce pure enough water to be used in semiconductor fabs which have ion content standards far more stringent than human consumption.

Additionally, 30p/cubic metre is only a 15% increase in the average combined water and sewage bill. And its probably less than that thanks to the continual improvement in the technology and the ability to decomission atleast some of the water storage capacity we currently have to pay for the maintenance of. (Who needs that many resevoirs when water supply is constant throughout the year).

As for the environmental damage caused by the systems, this can be ameriolated by the deployment of nuclear power desalination systems which have very little environmental impact considering the amount of power they produce.

 

[SussexMan]

National Water Grid.... Canals?

Suck it out one end, fill it up at the other. Shame about the locks getting in the way though I guess.

 

[transmanche]

In Western Australia, the Goldfields Water Pipeline is 330 miles long, serves 100,000 people and has been in use for over 100 years. However, it runs above ground for easy maintenance - something that probably wouldn't be acceptable here.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Surely if you were going to transport large quantities of surplus water from the north to the drought zone in the south the sensible way of doing this would be to use a fleet of ( sterlised ) old supertankers to shift 150,000+ tonnes or so at once?

Just add water loading / unloading pumping facilities at the main oil terminals ( and for goodness sake make sure the pipes use different fittings from the oil equipment! ) and you won't even need to dredge anything or build a new terminal anywhere..... just run a few miles of water pipeline between the terminals and the nearest water works.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Surely if you were going to transport large quantities of surplus water from the north to the drought zone in the south the sensible way of doing this would be to use a fleet of ( sterlised ) old supertankers to shift 150,000+ tonnes or so at once?

Just add water loading / unloading pumping facilities at the main oil terminals ( and for goodness sake make sure the pipes use different fittings from the oil equipment! ) and you won't even need to dredge anything or build a new terminal anywhere..... just run a few miles of water pipeline between the terminals and the nearest water works.

I think that would probably make more sense as a pipeline is permanent and we arn't always in 'water shortage mode' (i refuse to call it a drought as it isn't the overpopulated south now just uses more water than it can supply, not drought)

But that is ignoring the serious ecological and environmental damage moving water from north to south does.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

But that is ignoring the serious ecological and environmental damage moving water from north to south does.

Should be possible to treat the stuff to match local composition before releasing it into the distribution network shouldn't it? Maybe even fit something to the tanker to allow treatment ( "conversion"? ) during the shipping movement time?

 

[YorkshireBear]

Large scale alteration of ph of water will be expensive though an for such a short term solution its very difficult to justify the cost. You would maybe have to use a process similar to scandanvia where all our pollutants cause some serious acid rain over there. I believe they drop equivalent of bi carbonate of soda into some lakes. Whether that would have an effect on drinking water suitability i am not too sure.

 

[RichmondCommu]

I think that would probably make more sense as a pipeline is permanent and we arn't always in 'water shortage mode' (i refuse to call it a drought as it isn't the overpopulated south now just uses more water than it can supply, not drought)

But that is ignoring the serious ecological and environmental damage moving water from north to south does.

Jimmy aka James I agree that the SE is over populated but people have made a decision to live there and we need water! And yes we have a rain water storage container!

 

[HSTEd]

Large scale alteration of ph of water will be expensive though an for such a short term solution its very difficult to justify the cost. You would maybe have to use a process similar to scandanvia where all our pollutants cause some serious acid rain over there. I believe they drop equivalent of bi carbonate of soda into some lakes. Whether that would have an effect on drinking water suitability i am not too sure.

Could NeWater them, I imagine the amount of power required to force the water across the membrane to remove its normal diluted solids would be minimal.
At which point you just redissolve the appropriate minerals in it.

But that requires almost all the capital cost of a desalination plant, albeit with drastically reduced energy consumption.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I agree that the SE is over populated but people have made a decision to live there and we need water! And yes we have a rain water storage container!

The decision to build great swathes of housing in known areas of low rainfall was conveniently made for purposes of keeping "the Blessed South East" an area where the supposed market-led boom industries would thrive, but with total disregard to the Northern areas where heavy industry, coal mining, shipbuilding, etc, were in decline, but with little thought paid to the renewal of these areas.

Yet the natural resources of rainfall sourced water supply is now seen as something that the country as a whole has to share, unlike the prosperity that the South-East enjoyed prior to the bank's version of the South Sea Bubble.

 

[WatcherZero]

So now UU is planning a £2.2bn 6ft6'' pipeline alongside HS2 to bring water from the North to the South. Is there even room in the alignment for a pipe that big???

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Imagine the disruption if it bursts...

 

[S19]

So now UU is planning a £2.2bn 6ft6'' pipeline alongside HS2 to bring water from the North to the South. Is there even room in the alignment for a pipe that big???

It's just a pipe dream....

On a serious note. It's nice to see a little bit of forward thinking from my former employers

 

[Phil6219]

The decision to build great swathes of housing in known areas of low rainfall was conveniently made for purposes of keeping "the Blessed South East" an area where the supposed market-led boom industries would thrive, but with total disregard to the Northern areas where heavy industry, coal mining, shipbuilding, etc, were in decline, but with little thought paid to the renewal of these areas.

Yet the natural resources of rainfall sourced water supply is now seen as something that the country as a whole has to share, unlike the prosperity that the South-East enjoyed prior to the bank's version of the South Sea Bubble.

Exactly and just typical of the current and previous governments thinking over the last few decades...

So now UU is planning a £2.2bn 6ft6'' pipeline alongside HS2 to bring water from the North to the South. Is there even room in the alignment for a pipe that big???

That's interesting, I've not heard anything about this at my workplace (our business is industrial pipeline among other things) which is odd given we normally hear about upcoming projects, even those which are just rumours.

For a pipe to be 6ft 6" it will require quite a number of pumping stations to keep the water pressure up and as has already been mentioned the disruption caused if it breaks would be immense, not to mention if it's a bad break it will flood the line.

I'm for the previously mentioned idea of running very long trains, I don't think top & tailed 92s could work though as don't they cause too much of a power drain if running through the same section? Perhaps 60s could be used instead as they can haul serious loads and they can work in multiple with no issues (and they wouldn't require electrification should existing lines be used).

Out of interest what is the maximum length of trains on our network, is it one signal block?

Phil

 

[WatcherZero]

Yeah they say the cost is estimated based on the fabrication of custom pipes. I presume they would use a blowout accomadating design, incredibly strong main body with weaker sections that could blowout due to overpressue or blockage in a controlled manner (e.g. with appropiate drainage and works access).