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The Center for New Technologies of the Municipal Water Supply and Sewerage Company has prepared a summary of the research in 2024. The general direction of most projects was concerned about the environment. It also explored the possibilities of modern technology that would reduce water losses during failures and know how to detect toxic substances poured into sewers.

Electronic "nose"

Industrial wastewater raises a lot of emotions these days. Here, too, regulations clearly spell out the issue of substances "discharged" into the sewage system. For some time, these processes have been monitored by a special system that warns of irregularities. However, the company went a step further and investigated how the electronic “nose” works.

The device with the mysterious name is nothing more than a sensor for petroleum substances, which was tested at several sewage pumping stations in Wroclaw. 

It turned out to be a great addition to the industrial wastewater quality monitoring system already in place and has great potential in preventing illegal discharges of petroleum substances into the sewer system.

Przemyslaw Chrobot, manager of the Center for New Technologies at MPWiK

Recycled water and the Mozart program

Treated wastewater is an ecological concept of using water that has already been used once. Such water recycling. From the wastewater it goes to a specialized treatment plant and can be reused. MPWiK continued the Mozart project in cooperation with the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology.

Water from treated wastewater, which is recovered as part of the Closed Circuit Economy, can be reused, among other things:

  • in agriculture and irrigation of certain crops
  • in the home garden for watering plants
  • for washing streets, cars, facades
  • in a combined heat and power plant or power plant

Such treated, reused water prevents over-consumption of this potable water, especially in this era of global hydrological crisis.

How to effectively purify poor quality water, or WOW

Evaporative Water Purification (WOW) is another project that MPWiK has pursued with researchers from Wroclaw University of Science and Technology. In the simplest terms, the process studied in the project involves purifying water through natural evaporation and condensation from steam. In the process, it uses less energy.

WOW comes in handy in emergency situations - during floods, contamination of surface water with heavy metals, for example, or during hydrological droughts. A prototype of such a steam treatment plant was tested on the Odra River.

The technology will prevent water losses

Such losses most often occur during failures. That's why a network of measuring devices and information systems is being developed in Wroclaw, which inform the company about places of increased water consumption or anomalies that may indicate a failure. This allows the company to react before a water main is damaged and prevents excessive water loss.

Work is also underway to use artificial intelligence to identify locations most prone to failure and predict faults.