The doctor, mining engineer and head of the Infrastructure Exploitation Department of the Insular Water Council Óscar Campo González considers of great importance the technological evolution of the infrastructures used in Tenerife for the industrial production of water and, specifically, the excellent results that the use of membrane bioreactors is giving in the treatment plants of the Northeast and Adeje. Arona, which produce water of “excellent quality.” In the latter, it is planned that in the first quarter of 2024 four microturbines will be installed to produce energy with biogas from the sludge of this infrastructure.
It was one of the conclusions of his intervention, titled Evolution of Industrial Resources: Desalination, Demineralization, Purification, in the lecture series Question of Balance. Water in Tenerife, Tradition and Avant-gardeorganized by the Bethencourt y Molina Canarian Cultural Foundation of Engineering and Architecture, in collaboration with the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country of Tenerife (RSEAPT).
Campo, who described the Adeje-Arona pumping station as “impressive”, explained that it collects all the wastewater in the region and is located very close to the coast, so it is far from the treatment plant, which is located in the upper part of El Vallito, 3.5 kilometers. In his opinion, what is relevant is that it is a jump of 227 meters. “There are few pumping stations in the world with these characteristics,” he noted with the intention of highlighting “the challenges that this infrastructure posed in 1998, which serves as a model for other regions of the island,” he said.
At this point, he wanted to highlight the difficulties that had to be faced in the 90s and early 2000s to adapt to the urban singularities of the island, in addition to the fact that “the high quality of tourism” forced us to “sharpen our ingenuity to integrate facilities.” such as wastewater. In this sense, he cited the cases of Playa de Troya or Playa de Las Vistas, which go completely unnoticed and, at the same time, provide operational security with generator sets in the event of a lack of supply, odor treatment and redundant equipment. , complementary starting systems, etc. In short, he defended the need to consolidate current technologies “because we already know they work” and also advocated updating installations that are beginning to decline.
The engineer highlighted the management model carried out by the Cabildo, the Insular Water Council and the town councils, Balten and the operating companies that provide these services and insisted on the need to “stay abreast of innovations and new technologies.” , which need to be tested in situ.
In this regard, he commented that membrane bioreactors, sand filters, dehydration and cogeneration technologies have already been tested on the island… In his opinion, the best result is that of membrane bioreactors, but “we will have to continue experimenting and testing” with companies in the sector or with agreements with the University of La Laguna, because “undoubtedly we must continue moving forward.”
Desalination and desalination
Regarding the industrial production of water, he clarified that the island has five public desalination plants, which represent 80% of the desalinated water produced in Tenerife and predicted that, when the Granadilla and Fonsalía expansions come into operation, “next year or in 2025, production on the island will be above 110,000 cubic meters per day.”
Regarding the desalination of brackish waters, the head of the Department of Infrastructure Exploitation of the Insular Water Council specified that the island has six desalination plants, located in the western and northwestern region of Tenerife, that use reversible electrodialysis technology with the mission “mainly reducing fluoride in the supply water.” With these infrastructures, it has been achieved that the presence of fluoride is “below 1.5 mg/L, which is what the current drinking water regulations establish.”
Debugging and regeneration
Tenerife, as specified, has four large urban wastewater treatment plants. The technician from the Insular Water Council highlighted that since 2017 there has been “a qualitative leap in these infrastructures, which are now “wastewater purification and regenerating stations (EDRAR), which transform wastewater into water with the capacity to be reused.” .
Campo cited the specific case of the Northeast wastewater treatment plant, which uses membrane bioreactor technology, which makes the water have a “frankly surprising” quality. This same technology is used in the Adeje-Arona treatment plant, commissioned in 2019.
“These treatment plants represent a very big qualitative leap” because they use “a biological reactor, a sludge that has microorganisms, and the secret is in the membranes, which” are what achieve a product of extraordinary quality, acting as a physical barrier. “through which the filtered water is removed and which allows only certain particles to pass through.”
As he explained, “this barrier has a very small step, 0.04 microns, so bacteria, most viruses and a lot of solid elements” cannot overcome it. In this way, it is possible to “disinfect the water without any additional treatment” and comply with the Spanish regulations for the reuse of water and the European regulations, “really demanding” with the qualities for agricultural uses.
Regarding the sludge resulting from this process, he specified that it will be subjected to treatments such as solar drying, which allows a large part of the humidity to be removed. In addition, they can be used to produce renewable energy with biogas, store it and use it with, for example, microturbines. In fact, he stated that it is planned that in the first quarter of 2024 four microturbines will be installed in the Adeje-Arona treatment plant, with which “we will obtain two sources of energy from biogas: electrical and thermal, which will be used in the processes of the purifier.”
Campo also wanted to refer to the evolution of digital technologies, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, autonomous systems, etc., advances that can be used in the case of water, for example, to obtain information on the state of the system, relate it to the maintenance of the facilities and allow us to address any incident.
“Right now, the program that controls a desalination or treatment plant describes what is happening, it also helps us diagnose, but we will have models that begin to predict what is going to happen and even prescribe what we should change to achieve the maximum efficiency”. In short, “we are going to change the way we work,” she predicted.
The cycle continues this week with two conferences. This Monday the 30th, at 7:00 p.m., with Juan Arévalo Vílchez, doctor in civil engineering and head of R&D projects at Aqualia and Antonio García Lara, industrial engineer and head of Wastewater Treatment and Desalination at Aqualia, who They will talk about trends in desalination, the problems of adaptation from the research phase to the production phase, and the importance of public-private collaboration. On Thursday, November 2, the subject to be discussed will be digitalization models and artificial intelligence in processes and networks; Federico Cuyás Redondo, agronomist and director of DINAPSIS Canarias (Canaragua), will talk about it.
