Singapore is a densely populated island city state with more than five million people in a land area of about 710 sq km and no natural aquifers, which makes water resource management a challenge. “Driven by a vision of what it takes to be sustainable in water, we have been investing in research and technology, and have adopted an integrated approach to water management, developing a robust and diversified water supply system,” remarked Harry Seah, CTO of PUB. 

“We recognise the importance of game-changing technologies in the water industry, as well as the need for a common platform for stakeholders from across the water industry to come together and share innovative solutions, thereby speeding up the learning process for countries around the world,” he added.

The Singapore government has incorporated the industry into its national growth plan. The Environment & Water Industry Programme Office (EWI) was therefore established in 2006 to promote research and development in the field, grow the industry and position Singapore as a global R&D base for environment and water solutions.

As EWI’s key initiative to showcase the capabilities of the Singapore water industry, the Singapore International Water Week (SIWW) was established giving Singapore a global platform for the sharing and co-creation of water solutions. SIWW was designed to provide opportunities for government and municipal leaders from around the world to explore solutions to their cities’ water challenges and technical solutions to improve liveability. It also aims to assist scientists, researchers and companies in the commercialisation of technologies and showcase these technologies to local and national governments looking for innovative water solutions to address their challenges.

Water Technologies
There are many available technologies that can be leveraged for the management and purification of water resources. In terms of improving the quality of water, Mr Seah stated: “There is a strong need for good and reliable on-line sensors and instrumentation to monitor water quality continuously. We are developing one unit which uses fish activity as the sensor to detect changes in water quality. This is an early warning system where abnormal fish activity, for example, in terms of the swimming patterns indicates changes in water quality.”

Another instrument is the ‘Parasitometer’, “which is used for the detection of cryptosporidium, which can cause diarrhoea in humans if present in drinking water. A stand-alone device using a breakthrough technology that has a high detection rate, it can pick out a single crypto oocyst out of a 10 litre drinking water sample. It therefore has high relevance for all utilities around the world to ensure safe drinking water,” added Mr Seah.

In terms of technology already in use, Singapore employs a water supply strategy known as the ‘Four National Taps’. These four taps include water from local catchment, imported water, NEWater and desalinated water. “Our approach to water management can be distilled into three principles that will continue to guide our future plans to ensure an adequate supply of water: to capture every drop of rain that falls on Singapore; to collect every drop of used water; and to recycle every drop of water more than once,” stated Mr Seah.

“We have been making major investments to build up and diversify our water supply sources in order to strengthen our water security. This led to the introduction of NEWater and desalinated water into our water supply in the last decade, which supplements our local catchment and imported water,” he added.

NEWater is high-grade reclaimed water produced from treated used water that is further purified using advanced membrane technologies (microfiltration, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet disinfection), making the water ultra-clean and safe to drink. According to Mr Seah It can currently meet up to 30 percent of Singapore’s water demand. 

In terms of desalinated water, Mr Seah remarked: “Desalinated water has been a part of our water supply since 2005, with the opening of Singapore’s first desalination plant. A second and larger desalination plant, the Tuaspring desalination plant, was opened in September 2013.”

With the opening of the Tuaspring desalination plant, it is estimated that desalinated water can meet up to 25 percent of Singapore’s current water demand. These sources are more resilient against drought or dry spells, as evidenced during the recent 27-day dry spell in Singapore during February and early March. “During that period, we ran our NEWater and desalination plants at near-full capacity and also injected NEWater into our reservoirs to keep the water supply situation stable,” commented Mr Seah.

On the importance of R&D, Mr Seah remarked: “We have to always look at new, innovative ways to contain the rising costs of treating and producing water, to help keep water supply both sustainable and affordable. In Singapore, one focus area of R&D is on reducing energy consumption. These include projects to demonstrate the use of electrochemical technology to desalinate seawater using half 

the energy.” Expanding on this Mr Seah stated: “Some exciting R&D in this area is based on biomimicry or mimicking the biological processes by which mangrove plants and euryhaline fish extract seawater using negligible amounts of energy. Another research area is biomimetics, where aquaporins are embedded on membranes. These proteins are nature’s way of shuttling water in and out of cells while blocking out salts.”

Water Challenges
With no natural aquifers and limited size and land area, water resource management is a challenge in Singapore. In the 60s and 70s, Singapore faced all the problems of rapid urbanisation — polluted rivers, water shortages and widespread flooding. Today, the island is able to produce the water that its industries and population requires. 

“By investing in water technology and adopting an integrated approach to water management in the last 50 years, we have developed a diversified and sustainable water supply system. In particular, NEWater and desalinated water, which were introduced into our water supply in the last decade, are results of these investments,” remarked Maurice Neo, MD, SIWW. It is important to recognise the benefits of exploiting the energy-water-waste nexus, and tap on it as a resource. These resources are intimately linked —the production of energy requires a significant amount of water; and the production of potable and industrial water also necessitates energy consumption. Both the production of energy and water also produces a significant amount of waste in the form of sludge, brine and waste heat. In addition, waste disposal is becoming more challenging especially in Singapore where there is land constraints. 

As energy prices climb and water becomes an increasingly scarce and valuable resource, there is a need to re-think the way water, waste and energy are managed, and look for solutions that utilise this waste — sludge, waste heat, as a resource. As Mr Seah added: “Co-locating utilities (power stations, refuse incineration plants, water reclamation plants, seawater desal plants and NEWater plants and possibly, some energy and water intensive industries) could be the concept of the future to achieve the lowest energy, water and waste footprint.” 

Technology is also evolving to allow us to harness synergies in this water-energy-waste nexus, and “Singapore is taking steps to encourage and work with companies and research institutes to develop such technologies,” remarked Mr Seah.

The Little Red Dot
Singapore has been put on the map in many ways, in regards to water, by its innovation and management of water, yes, but more boldly by hosting the Singapore International Water Week (SIWW). “Very early on, we recognised the need for a common platform for stakeholders from across the water industry to come together and share innovative solutions, to speed up the learning process for countries around the world. SIWW is a platform to bring together the world’s thought leaders to share and co-create water solutions in anticipation of change and the challenges we face,” stated Mr Neo.

The environment and water industry has been identified as a key growth area in Singapore, with the Environment and Water Industry Programme Office (EWI) set up in 2006 to spearhead this growth. EWI, led by the PUB and involving partner agencies including EDB, SPRING, IE Singapore, aims to promote research and development in the field, grow the industry and position Singapore as a global R&D base for environment and water solutions. 

“With a funding of S$470 million (US$374 million) from the National Research Foundation (NRF), the EWI is well poised to meet its objective: growing Singapore into a global hydrohub for leading-edge technologies and furthering Singapore’s vibrant research community,” commented Mr Neo, before adding: “The water sector alone should see its value-added contribution to the GDP rise from S$500 million in 2003 to S$1.7 billion in 2015. Jobs for this sector are expected to double to about 11,000, and will largely comprise of professional and skilled positions.”
Today, Singapore is recognised as a global hydrohub with over 130 water companies and 26 research centres in a vibrant water industry ecosystem. Singapore has been at the forefront of environmental innovation and was an early adopter of solutions such as NEWater (wastewater reclamation) and the Deep Tunnel Sewerage System.

“Leveraging Singapore’s role as a global hub and marketplace for sustainable solutions, SIWW plays a critical role in this strategy. This event brings together government, industry, international organisations and academia, all of whom have a vested interest in water sustainability. Through events like TechXchange and the Hydropreneur Programme, it connects water technology startups with potential investors and funding schemes, promoting the commercialisation of new technologies. Water Expo and Business Forums also seek to provide an ideal platform to match buyers to sellers in the water sector,” added Mr Neo.

Orange County Water District
The Orange County Water District (OCWD) manages a large groundwater basin in central northern orange county, which provides approximately 70 percent of the total water demands for nearly 2.4 million people. At the 2014 edition of SIWW the OCWD will be awarded the Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) Water Prize for its work in groundwater management and water reclamation using advanced water reuse technologies, as well as its achievements in public policy and community outreach.

“Originally in the 1970s we created a facility here on our site in Orange County to provide recycled water as a source of supply to the groundwater basin. In fact, we really created the first NEWater type facility that used reverse osmosis to treat used water, and that was really quite pioneering at that period of time,” stated Mike Markus, GM, OCWD.

 “We were looking to increasing that facility and decided to expand it in the late 1990s and so created a new project called the groundwater replenishment system, which provided 265,000 cubic metres per day NEWater that we then used as a supply for our groundwater basin,” 
he added.
 

This is the same NEWater that is often talked about in Singapore. As Mr Markus explained: “Our advanced purification process consists of taking the secondary effluent used water and then rushing it through microfiltration followed by reverse osmosis and then UV light with hydrogen peroxide,” before adding a final step: “The advanced oxidation step, which removes any low weight molecular organic material that may remain in the water after the reverse osmosis process. OCWD was a pioneer in this field, and probably one of the first in the world to utilise that specific type of treatment to treat used water.”

 On his thoughts on why he believes OCWD was ultimately awarded the LKY Water Prize, he remarked: “I believe we were awarded the LKY Water Prize because of the total body of work from OCWD. We were created back in 1933, and certainly in the early years the groundwater basin was tremendously depleted. What we were able to do is manage that groundwater basin, in essence bring it back to life to what it is now, a dependable source of water supply for Orange County.”

Done through investment, and “through improving our infrastructure and recharge facilities, and in investing in recycled water as a source of supply to the basin, and also in developing stormwater capture projects,” he explained.

OCWD has pioneered all the elements that are relevant for the successful implementation of water reuse and groundwater management, including the application of water treatment technologies for treating used water, artificial groundwater recharge, groundwater monitoring, groundwater modelling, pollution prevention, water quality management and public outreach.

The facility is currently expanding from 265,000 cubic metres today to about 380,000 cubic metres per day. That expansion is will be completed in the first quarter of 2015, with a further expansion planned that will take the facility from 380,000 cubic metres per day to 500,000 cubic metres per day. “We are already looking at potentially designing that final phase to get us to 500,000 cubic metres per day and that could be done realistically within the next 4 to 5 years,” added Mr Markus.

In terms of the future of the industry and the direction OCWD will take over the next 10 years, Mr Markus remarked: “I think actually where we are leaning towards, industry wise, over the next 10 years is going towards what is referred to as direct potable reuse, in other words, not requiring a groundwater basin or a surface reservoir but able to go directly into a pipeline and ultimately to the water distribution network.”

Read more: http://www.iaasiaonline.com/index.php/sector-spotlight/item/71-water-for-a-nation

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.