Water treatment first as Scottish Water trials Nyex

Scottish Water is set to undertake the world’s first long-term trial of Arvia’s Nyex treatment system on drinking water at a specially established pilot plant in West Lothian. The trial, which will run separately to the existing water treatment works at Pateshill, will assess the effectiveness of the system in removing organic material from raw water.

Nyex is a tertiary treatment system which combines adsorption with oxidation in a process that has many potential applications in water and wastewater processing. In municipal water applications, the main advantage of Arvia’s Nyex over granular activated carbon (GAC) filters is the elimination of waste - cutting the cost of having to dispose of waste solids to landfill.

The Scottish Water trial is focused on establishing whether Nyex could have an application on hard-to-treat water with a high content of organic material, due to the impact this can have on drinking water treatment. Bench trials have shown the Arvia system could remove 68 per cent of organic material from water, with the new pilot set to test the treatment on a larger scale to see if these results can be replicated and sustained.

Arvia project manager Akmez Nabeerasool said, “We are delighted to be taking this pilot project to a scaled-up level, which is the first long-term drinking water application for Nyex since approval by the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI). The pilot will assess the effectiveness on a range of flow and current parameters and locate the technology at different positions in the treatment train, including before and after pre-treatment.”

Allan Mason, senior project manager for business excellence at Scottish Water, said, “Research and innovation is key to Scottish Water being able to improve its water and wastewater services and ensure we are operating as efficiently as possible, even in the most remote of our communities. The bench trials of the Arvia system produced some excellent results on a difficult-to-treat raw water and I am very excited to see if we can replicate and sustain performance on a larger scale.

“If it performs well during this pilot, it could potentially offer us another method for treating drinking water in an efficient and cost-effective manner which continues to meet the high standards of service we aim to provide to our customers.”