Improving Stormwater Harvesting And Purification Efficiency In Fitzroy Garden

Systematic Water Flow Diagnosis

Discuss about the Methodology For Implementing Effective Water Harvesting In Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne.

The stormwater harvesting system of Fitzroy garden incorporated multiple water refreshment procedure together sequentially. This system consists of 4 large size water storage and 6 small size water storage. Small water storages help to store a small amount of water temporarily where the large water storages store a large volume of water for the long-term procedure (melbourne.vic.gov.au 2017). The whole system is capable of storing the rain or stormwater and refine for further use. However, the particular set of mechanisms implemented in water harvesting procedure of Fitzroy garden is little time-consuming. This implemental process has implemented single phase absorption method to flitter the water both in initial stage as well as in subsequent filtering process. In the initial step, the water is collected by draining and in the second phase, the absorption and bio-filtering procedure is used. Therefore, the latency time between input and output water flow is considerably high.  It increases the overall time consumption for processing the water to reuse and decrease the per unit water purification (Kwon et al. 2014). The per unit water purification refers to the time required to execute the whole harvesting process in a specific amount of time. Along with the time consumption, the water collection procedure is not highly efficient. In current harvesting plan, the water collection procedure follows the soft soil rainwater absorption. On the other hand, the water of pavement areas is collected by ground inclination system. In this system, the water on concrete pavement is collected by an underground pipeline. This water collection pipelines are ended at the main initial storage unit (Cerff et al. 2012).

Therefore from this systematic water flow diagnosis, it is clear that the water collected from the draining system get less purification along with the water collected from concrete pavements while passing through the long-term processing. This imbalanced purification procedure has a considerable amount of impact in the ultimate output of water harvesting and purification procedure as well as final storing and distribution method. In this current water harvesting and filtering procedure of  Fitzroy garden, some necessary alterations of the operational methodology are needed (Al-Ansari et al. 2012). The aim of this alteration is to increase the whole harvesting and water purification system that can enhance the per unit water harvesting. At the same time, it should balance the water purification depth for water collected from planted land as well as from concrete pavement. Increase the affectivity, and implementation potentiality of output water is the major target of this new alteration process.

Necessary Alterations for Improvement

In the new method of purification, the initial water collection procedure will be divided into two major sections. One water collection system will be responsible for collecting water from planted land by Swales system, and other water collection system will receive water from the concrete pavement by PICP system. Apart from that to increase the time efficiency in final purification process absorption bio-filtration will be altered by Constructed wetlands process. These two phase alteration can improve the overall efficiency of current stormwater harvesting and purification procedure (Zakaria et al. 2012). The individual stages of systematic modification have been described below:

Initially, the water will be collected from Swales and PICP process. In Swales process water will not be directly drained from the exterior surface of the ground. In this system, the water will be collected from natural soaking or primary bio-filtration procedure of the planted soil. The maximum area of Fitzroy Park is covered with soft soil and grass cover land. Therefore this method will collect the maximum amount of water. The main gravel line and many secondary gravel lines will pass through the underground of this moist and soft soil covered land. On the other hand, PICP will be used to filter the water collected from the exterior surface of the concrete pavement at very initial stage (Rahman, Keane and Imteaz, 2012). Permeable Interlocking Concrete Pavements or PICP is the main components or tools for executing this filtering procedure. It needs a specific type of concrete material which has multiple layers for filtering the rainwater. The 32% to 40% of blank space within internal concrete particle allow the rainwater to be absorbed (Belmeziti, Coutard and de Gouvello 2013). This layer consists of sand, loamy sand, sandy loam, loam, silt loam, sandy clay loam, clay loam, sandy clay silt clay and clay sequentially.  These materials will make the four-stage basic filtration process that can purify the 40 to 50% of polluted suspended material at the very initial stage.

In the second stage, the water will be filtered in a sedimentation plant instead of the Gross pollutant trap. In the conventional GPT the major processing of the water is the separation of solid and comparatively large, visible material from the water. Mainly plastics, paper, metal foils and other solid particles are separated from the main water supply in this section. However, after implementing the Swale and PICP technique of water collection there will be no need for the solid material separation process (Ward, Memon and Butler, 2012). Therefore, in this second stage the water will be stored in the sedimentation chamber where the sedimentation will separate suspended particulate matters or microscopic particles.

Proposed Methodology for Improvement

After the sedimentation procedure, the water will be transferred to a large chamber. In this chamber, the water will be stored for a long time for pumping preparation. The pumping system will be connected with this chamber to transfer the water for Constructed wetlands process. The noticeable fact is the currently used flower bed bio-filtration will be replaced by this method to increase the filtering time. Fitzroy garden has lots of pools and swamp lands to conduct this procedure. In Constructed wetlands, the water flows horizontally through the swamp area. Marches, Billabongs, lakes, mudflats, Peatlands are the major field of executing this process. The horizontal motion of water instead of vertical percolation in bio-filtration bed reduces the required time for processing (Sample and Liu 2014).  

In the next phase, the water will be collected In an underground secondary chamber to prepare the water for UltraViolet Ray testing. This process is already being used in Fitzroy garden. Similarly, the current nighttime filtering procedure will be unchanged as well. In this process, the accuracy of an implemented process will be measured while killing the microscopic bacteria and other microscopic living particles.

After this phase, this water will be supplied for plantation system as well as for other operations that need 90 to 95% of purified water (Biazin et al. 2012). After few additional processing, this water can be used for drinking purposes as well. Additionally, the water transmitting pipelines will be subdivided into two operating segments namely input flow pipes and output flow pipes. The input flow pipes will be responsible to supply the water to a specific area and output pipes will be responsible for draining the water from a specific chamber. Apart from that, the water supply pipes are subdivided into 3 categories as per their capability of carrying water namely Major pipelines, Secondary pipelines and minor pipeline.

From the above analysis of current water supply, it is clear that the latency time between input and output water flow is considerably high.  It increases the overall time consumption for processing the water to reuse and decrease the per unit water purification. The alteration in current stormwater harvesting process of Fitzroy garden will increase the whole harvesting and water purification system that can enhance the per unit water harvesting. At the same time, it also balances the water purification depth for water collected from planted land as well as from concrete pavement. Increase the affectivity and implementation potentiality of output water is the major target of this new alteration process. Using Swales process and PICP will reduce the overall water collection as well as harvesting procedure (De Kwaadsteniet et al. 2013). After implementing the Swale and PICP technique of water collection there will be no need for the additional solid material separation process like Gross pollutant trap. In Constructed wetlands, the water flows horizontally through the swamp area that also a less time-consuming process than existing absorption method. Apart from that after few additional processing, this water can be used for drinking purposes as well. Moreover implementing this minor alteration process can increase the overall performance and efficiency of current stormwater harvesting process of Fitzroy garden.

Conclusion:

From the above methodology, it can be said that the stormwater harvesting system of Fitzroy garden incorporated multiple water refreshment procedure together sequentially. The whole system is capable of storing the rain or stormwater and refine for further use. In this current water harvesting and filtering procedure of Fitzroy garden, some essential alterations of the operational methodology are needed. Using PICP and Swales method at the initial stage and replacing the current plant bed bio-filtration by Constructed wetlands process can increase the operational efficiency significantly.

References:

Al-Ansari, N., Ezz-Aldeen, M., Knutsson, S. and Zakaria, S., 2012. Water harvesting and reservoir optimization in selected areas of South Sinjar Mountain, Iraq. Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, 18(12), pp.1607-1616.

Belmeziti, A., Coutard, O. and de Gouvello, B., 2013. A new methodology for evaluating potential for potable water savings (PPWS) by using rainwater harvesting at the urban level: The case of the municipality of Colombes (Paris Region). Water, 5(1), pp.312-326.

Biazin, B., Sterk, G., Temesgen, M., Abdulkedir, A. and Stroosnijder, L., 2012. Rainwater harvesting and management in rainfed agricultural systems in sub-Saharan Africa–a review. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, 47, pp.139-151.

Cerff, M., Morweiser, M., Dillschneider, R., Michel, A., Menzel, K. and Posten, C., 2012. Harvesting fresh water and marine algae by magnetic separation: screening of separation parameters and high gradient magnetic filtration. Bioresource technology, 118, pp.289-295.

De Kwaadsteniet, M., Dobrowsky, P.H., Van Deventer, A., Khan, W. and Cloete, T.E., 2013. Domestic rainwater harvesting: microbial and chemical water quality and point-of-use treatment systems. Water, Air, & Soil Pollution, 224(7), p.1629.

Kwon, S.H., Park, J., Kim, W.K., Yang, Y., Lee, E., Han, C.J., Park, S.Y., Lee, J. and Kim, Y.S., 2014. An effective energy harvesting method from a natural water motion active transducer. Energy & Environmental Science, 7(10), pp.3279-3283.

melbourne.vic.gov.au (2017). Stormwater treatment types – City of Melbourne Urban Water. [online] City of Melbourne Urban Water. Available at: https://urbanwater.melbourne.vic.gov.au/industry/treatment-types/ [Accessed 25 May 2018].

Rahman, A., Keane, J. and Imteaz, M.A., 2012. Rainwater harvesting in Greater Sydney: Water savings, reliability and economic benefits. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 61, pp.16-21.

Sample, D.J. and Liu, J., 2014. Optimizing rainwater harvesting systems for the dual purposes of water supply and runoff capture. Journal of cleaner production, 75, pp.174-194.

Ward, S., Memon, F.A. and Butler, D., 2012. Performance of a large building rainwater harvesting system. Water research, 46(16), pp.5127-5134.

Zakaria, S., Al-Ansari, N., Ezz-Aldeen, M. and Knutsson, S., 2012. Rain water harvesting at eastern Sinjar Mountain, Iraq. Geoscience Research, 3(2), p.100.