We must continually evolve and improve how we take care of one of life’s essentials. 

Our innovation strategy is to research and develop new solutions and incubate and experiment with ideas that already exist to adopt solutions quickly. We aim to learn from others and collaborate locally, nationally and globally.

Our focus areas for innovation in water resources, treatment and distribution.

We’ll make sure we continue to deliver clean, safe drinking water by developing technologies that enhance our treatment capability, and consistently deliver high-quality water through our network to our customers.

Research into raw water quality improvement, such as algae management, and utilising the latest developments in monitoring and flow cytometry will ensure we can limit treatment demands and further increase our treatment control.

We can optimise water production by researching and developing transformative technologies and using analytics and digital twin capability to adapt our water sourcing and treatment to future regional, national and climate challenges. 

Upgrading and renewing our assets in the most cost-effective way, making our repair operations more efficient for the benefit of our customers, will help us to reduce mains bursts, supply interruptions and ultimately reduce leakage.

Through support-automated operation and condition-based maintenance, we’ll reduce waste in our processes. Harvesting energy from our existing assets, such as vibration conversion to support self-powered sensors and remote condition monitoring is just one of the ways we’re looking to limit waste.

Our distribution infrastructure can be improved through sourcing raw water efficiently, in a way that doesn’t negatively impact the environment, and looking at alternative sources of raw water.

We can reduce the cost of cleaning water by reducing the losses in the process and reducing costs of installing, maintaining and operating new equipment, in a safe and controlled manner.

Our focus areas for innovation Wastewater Collection and Resource Recovery.

Severn Trent have 94,000km of sewers and currently have around 5,000 sensors on the network providing less than 0.5% coverage.

By investing in sewer sensor technology that can be deployed at scale, we will be able to more proactively intercept network failures preventing service failures like pollutions or blockages. 

Through using digital twins, analytical tools and machine learning, we will be able to better predict the behaviour of our network and prevent issues such as blockages and pollutions from occurring.

Through continuing to explore and use new technology and techniques for sewerage operation, repair and rehab, like digless technologies we will be able to minimise customer disruption from our activities.

We use effluent and asset monitoring to provide visibility of the performance of our treatment works and to help us intervene ahead of process and asset failure. But current costs and maintenance requirements prohibit their widespread use throughout the wastewater treatment process.

We need a range of cost-effective effluent quality and asset monitoring devices that can be easily deployed and that have realistic lifespan and/or maintenance requirements.

Energy for waste pumping and treatment represents the biggest single operational cost for the business. With tightening effluent consent standards, we’re looking at higher energy costs in AMP7 and beyond.

We want to utilise retrofittable, low total capital cost treatment technologies which significantly reduce our energy demands.

Maximising energy production and alternative sources of energy

• Reducing cost to treat
• Energy production
• Enhancing sludge products
• Creating fertiliser products from waste inputs
• Producing hydrogen from anaerobic digestion by-products and waste streams
  

Taking advantage of the rapid changes in technology

• Building our data science and machine learning expertise for predictive maintenance, dynamic risk management, simulation and automated decision support.
• Using innovative sensor and data acquisition technologies to drive down costs and maximise our cloud capabilities.
• Exploring opportunities to support our field work force through the use of tools to improve task notification and feedback, provide on-the-job support and improve safety and welfare.
  

A first in the UK full-scale wastewater innovation test pad at our Redditch treatment site which supports our long-term urban wastewater strategy and some of the low energy wastewater treatment we are testing.

Our waste water treatment innovation facility at Spernal Sewage works is open for business.

The Resource Recovery and Innovation Centre provides a full-scale plug-and-play testbed where we can develop new technologies and undertake demonstrations and trials in a safe, controlled environment.

We’re keen to collaborate with technology suppliers, academics and others who wish to utilise the following facilities;

• Influent of 500m3/day crude sewage, 1000m3/day settled sewage or tankered imports.
• A fully equipped waste laboratory
• Dedicated technical resources
• Conference room
• Opportunities to trial monitoring and treatment technology on the main works

Flooding and Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO) spills happen because existing sewers can no longer convey the volumes for which they were designed due to climate change, growth and other catchment pressures.​

Solutions such as additional buried storage or sewer enlargement are expensive, space prohibitive, slow to implement and not carbon efficient.​ CENTAUR® is an AI-enabled automatic flow control system that manages flows and mobilises pipe storage in-real time to prevent downstream escapes.​

CENTAUR® solutions are first modelled within InfoWorks ICM to seek out hydraulic capacity opportunities to manage a problem. Following this, hardware is retrofitted in manhole chambers (sensors, control gates).​ 

Feasibility to full commissioning occurs in less than 12 months, enabling current flood and CSO spills to be quickly resolved.​

Sewage Pumping Station (SPS) Dynamic Risk Matrix is a new product that has been developed in-house by the Data Science Team at Severn Trent.

This is a dynamic dashboard available on both desktop and mobile devices and shows a prioritised list of our c3,700 SPS sites ordered by highest probability of failure for the day.

The dashboard also has a map which geographically shows the location of selected pumping stations allowing for users to easily recognise the location and surrounding areas.

The dashboard is used daily by our Waste Field Technicians and enables a daily data driven visit prioritisation to identify and fix issues before they cause any significant problems, or at worst a waste pollution event.  .

The Mecana Algae Removal trial was designed to remove algae from raw water in Shuhstoke Reservoir before it reaches Whiteacre Water Treatment Works.

Mecana filters are ‘pile cloth’ filters used in wastewater for removal of phosphates. These have been used to remove the algal load in raw water before it is sent for treatment.

We have developed a first-of-a-kind, demonstration scale Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (AnMBR) based on ten years of research at Cranfield University.​

Anaerobic mainstream treatment will be a key building block for energy neutral wastewater management and resource recovery. ​We have collaborated with the supply chain to deliver a 500m³/d AnMBR by integrating off-the-shelf upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor, ultra filtration membrane and membrane degassing systems.​

We are running a two-year programme to finalise the design and establish performance.​ The trial is being carried out at the Resource Recovery and Innovation Centre (R2IC) at Spernal STW and is part funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Next Gen programme.

Membrane aerated biofilm reactors (MABR) use hollow fibre membranes to support the growth of nitrifying bacteria.

The technology could be up to 75% more energy efficient than conventional activated sludge plants (ASPs) and produce 50% less sludge.​ 

MABRs can be retrofitted to existing ASPs and deployed at sites where ammonia permits are being tightened.​ 

There are several suppliers of MABR technology and we are running a side-by-side trial of the Suez and Oxymem systems at our Research Recovery and Innovation Centre (R2IC), Spernal.​ 

The ePulse condition assessment technology uses acoustic signals and advanced computer algorithms to assign a condition grade on our distribution mains.

This will be used to derive a forecast pipe life expectancy, to target mains renewal more effectively, especially within high cost DMAs such as Birmingham.

Developing a unique technology that can convert waste grade digestate from our anaerobic digester plants into a saleable product.

This project has successfully secured £1.1million in external funding from the Carbon Trust, £630k of which will help to fund us to build a pilot plant to produce high quality fertiliser at Minworth.

This is a real game-changing opportunity for us as we will be the first water company in the UK to deliver this solution.

The technology reuses many of the waste streams that you would find on a sewage treatment works - carbon dioxide from Combined Heat and Power (CHP) engine exhausts, ammonia from centrate returns and the potential for recovered phosphorous.

Early indication shows that if we treat half of our sludge through this process, there is a potential to save around £2.75 million and bring in approximately £2 million in revenue from a 10,000 tonne per year plant.