WATER & WASTE TREATMENT
A landfill wastewater treatment technology which almost halves operating costs is now available from LAT Water. Find out more here...
n onsite landfill wastewater (leachate) thermal treatment and separation process called LAT (Low temperature
Ambient pressure Technology) has demonstrated a 48% reduction in operating costs and a 70% reduction in energy usage at Viridor’s Broadpath landfill site in Devon. Now commercially available, LAT is set to change the way local councils and landfill operators manage leachate forever. LAT uses low-grade onsite waste heat or
renewable energy sources which reduce energy usage by up to 70% while cutting carbon emissions. Local communities also benefit from better air quality due to the reduction of road tankers used by many operators to truck raw landfill wastewater to remote offsite treatment facilities. Over one year, using LAT, Viridor’s Broadpath landfill site is set to save the equivalent emissions of nearly one million car-miles. Existing global leachate treatment
technologies consist of outdated, energy- hungry processes. LAT challenges these techniques by removing the need for traditional leachate treatment processes: Reverse Osmosis – membrane type solutions that cannot effectively operate beyond moderate water recovery levels (little beyond 50%), and Thermal Boiling Solutions that use boiling water techniques and pressure vessels to treat leachate. To date, most research in the field has focused on incremental improvements in
SHAKING UP THE SECTOR A
/day /d LAT in China for the past
base technologies rather than seeking a step change solution in the treatment of leachate, both in landfill and across other water intensive processes. LAT takes a new approach to return up to 90% of water to be reused and/or recycled, onsite and efficiently Mark Hardiman, CEO of LAT Water said: “We’ve been running the pilot at a 10 m3
demonstration trial for six months at Viridor’s Broadpath landfill site in Devon and the results speak for themselves. We have also been operating a 120m3
eighteen months, so we know that LAT is scalable. We’re now making LAT available to all landfill operators and local councils across the UK on a lease basis, which reduces the CAPEX hurdle and shortens the ROI.” The use of waste heat provides net carbon
savings as well as putting to use heat sources which would otherwise be polluting the environment and contributing to global warming. Product concentrate can be treated within existing discharge consents, without the need for the costly addition of new permits. LAT is a vital technology in the decarbonisation goals of landfill operators and local councils while delivering a return on investment (ROI) through efficiency savings. The pilot has been partly funded by the
department of Business Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), as part of their Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA). The programme is managed by The Carbon Trust, with support from Jacobs, and provides funding for energy
LAT Water’s 10m3
/day
thermal treatment tower at Viridor’s Broadpath Landfill Site, Devon
efficiency process technologies, alongside incubation and commercialisation support. Tim Rotheray, innovation director of Viridor
commented: “
...More than 50% of the costs for us are related to the disposal of the leachate and by reducing these costs and recovering the resources from the leachate, we take an important step towards a circular economy. We are hugely excited to be working with LAT Water on this game-changing technology and look ahead to substantial cost and efficiency benefits in the years to come.” Paul McKinney, BEIS IEEA programme
manager at the Carbon Trust added: "LAT Water has demonstrated a step change energy efficient solution for treating contaminated water which could form a key technology within the UK’s drive to reduce energy use and consequently achieve reductions in carbon emissions.” The LAT process makes use of waste heat
which would otherwise be discharged into the environment, as the key energy source to drive the process. Combined with the reduction in diesel fuel through reduced tanker movements, and more energy efficient separation technology, the process is set to shake up the wastewater management sector.
LAT Water
www.latwater.co.uk
NOVEMBER 2021 | PROCESS & CONTROL 41
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