Broomfield's MWH Global Teaming with General Electric

New initiative to help design and build massive re-use projects for cities and large-industrial users

For decades, Broomfield's MWH Global has been helping build dams and treatment plants to deliver water all over the world, from China to Africa to Colorado Springs.

But late last year it joined forces with General Electric Corp., launching an initiative both companies hope will allow billions of gallons of water to be treated to new levels of cleanliness and delivered to thirsty customers.

Until now cleaning wastewater well enough so that it can be used to water lawns, cool power plants or even used for drinking, has been a costly, environmentally difficult process.

But the growing demand for clean water - worldwide demand is expected to exceed supply by 40 percent by 2030 - is luring new investment, generating new technologies and opening doors that did not exist even 15 years ago.

MWH Global, already known for its engineering and construction expertise building dams and treatment plants, wants to capitalize on the need to re-use water cheaply using less electricity.

Though it has worked with GE on a number of public projects, the two companies have formally joined forces to link MWH's construction and planning expertise with GE's water treatment technologies. Investment bank Goldman Sachs will provide its financing expertise.

"Half of what we're going to be doing is working through the possibilities and problem solving," said John Hanula, MWH Global's vice president of business development.

Key problems include cost, waste disposal, high energy use and regulatory uncertainty.

"Hopefully the new plants will perform better and produce more water at a lower cost," Hanula said.

Reused water costs nearly twice as much as water gathered from streams or from underground aquifers, with reused water coming in at about $2,000 an acre foot, compared to $1,000 an acre foot for more traditional supplies, according to Hanula. An acre foot equals about 326,000 gallons of water, enough to supply two urban homes for one year.

Because of this, the U.S. has been slow to adopt reused water. According to the research and trade group Watereuse, based in Washington, D.C., just 7.3 percent of worldwide water supplies are reused, with countries such as Israel and Singapore leading the charge to expand reuse. Israel, for instance, relies on reused water for 70 percent of its supplies.

But it's not just cost that hampers its development. Reuse systems generate waste streams that are difficult to manage.

Depending on which technology is used, reuse treatment systems create a salty waste stream or a watery discharge that is filled with nitrites and nitrates.

Cities near oceans can dispose of brine in the ocean. But for inland states, such as Colorado and others, the process is much more difficult and expensive.

Sometimes waste streams can be superheated, crystallizing waste so that it can be disposed of in landfills. But the energy costs associated with the heat processing make this approach too expensive for most communities.

In Colorado, most local supplies come from streams and underground aquifers. Communities such as Denver, Erie and Colorado Springs, among others, use limited reuse to help expand water supplies, but it's still a small fraction of the state's overall water portfolio.

Denver Water, for instance, treats on average of 176 million gallons of water each day for its customers to drink. Its recycled water plant produces a fraction of that, just 6 million gallons per day which it uses to irrigate the city's park system and which Xcel Energy uses to cool some of its power plants.

But Colorado, like the rest of the U.S., is facing water shortages, and major utilities hope any advances in reused water plants will help them address those shortfalls.

"It's our intent to reuse everything that we can within legal, technical and permit barriers," said Jim Lochhead, general manager of Denver Water.

MWH and GE have done extensive work with coastal cities and MWH in 2015 won a major contract with San Diego.

That coastal community is investing $2.7 billion in a sophisticated water reuse system that, by 2035, will produce roughly one-third of the city's drinking water and allow it to drought-proof its water system.

MWH and GE are hopeful that major advances in creating so-called "energy neutral" water systems are close at hand. Last year, GE bought a British company whose technology uses biogas from waste water to generate enough electricity to treat the water, and enough excess power to return to the grid, according to Jon Freedman, vice president of GE's water division.

Source: Daily Camera

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