Ammonia removal success in Wiltshire village leads to equipment purchase

By Peter Davison

22 June 2023

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Engineers fitting Hybrid-SAF - submerged aerated filter - units

Wastewater treatment technology hired to provide enhanced ammonia removal at a village works has been purchased permanently by Wessex Water.

The water utility, which serves south-west England, hired two Hybrid-SAF - submerged aerated filter - units from WCS Environmental Engineering to provide tertiary treatment at Pewsey Water Recycling Centre in Wiltshire.

The units replaced two ageing SAFs in need of an upgrade. Wessex Water required alternative ammonia removal technology that could be set up quickly to ensure compliance with environmental standards was maintained at all times.

Each Hybrid-SAF unit achieves 8 mg/l ammonia, which they are required to meet at least 95 per cent of the time.

They are treating a combined peak flow of 12.5l/s at the site, which serves a population equivalent of 7,360.

Following a trial period which proved the effectiveness of the process in maintaining compliance, Wessex Water opted to retain the units permanently.

Monica Rodrigues, utility manager at WCSEE, said: “We are pleased to have completed the sale of two T1000 Hybrid-SAF units, which have been successfully removing ammonia from partial effluent flows at Pewsey treatment works.

"By initially hiring the units, Wessex Water was able to maintain ammonia compliance quickly, while we demonstrated the technology’s compatibility with this site.”

The patented Hybrid-SAF biological process technology employs a submerged moving-bed, fixed-film reactor which can treat wastewater with greater energy efficiency than traditional SAFs, in a tighter site footprint.

Modular in design, with a 30 per cent smaller footprint than comparable technologies, the units are built offsite and can be easily transported and installed quickly.

They can be hired on a short or long-term basis, for reactive or planned work, with the option of purchasing at a later date. When no longer required on a particular site, the units can be easily transported and deployed elsewhere.

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.