Madhu Murali
I started my position as a Research Fellow at Trinity College in September 2020, which was right in the middle of the Dŵr Uisce project (and a global pandemic). In the spirit of travel restrictions or lack thereof, I thought it might be nice to catalogue some of the places that I have had the opportunity to travel in the Ireland-Wales region for my last blog post alongside some updates on the projects I was involved in at these locations. We’ll start out with Dublin, where I did most of my work and follow on with some work across the Irish Sea in Wales before finishing in Tipperary back across the Sea.
Dublin: A lot of my initial time in Dublin was spent designing and testing the lab-scale dissolved air flotation tank in the Hydraulics Laboratory at Trinity College Dublin (pictured below). More information on this tank and the goals of our work is available here and here. We have progressed this work in the last few months by completing experiments with a trial heat exchanger in the tank to determine that a significant amount of heat can be recovered from this process without significantly impacting flow patterns within the tank. We have also replicated the temperature dynamics within the tank in a computer model to further assess heat recovery possibilities.
The lab-scale dissolved air flotation tank at Trinity College
Wastewater Temperature at one of the monitored locations from the Student Housing Complex
Bangor: My project in Bangor involved monitoring wastewater temperatures in a student housing complex with the aim of assessing the change in wastewater temperature within the sewer network of the complex and linking this with opportunities for wastewater heat recovery. Our monitoring identified the ‘student’ diurnal hot water usage trend which is very similar to standard residential use but transposed ahead some hours in line with the students’ later starts and nights! The modelling of wastewater temperature dynamics within these sewers is also approaching completion and will provide more insight on ideal locations for heat recovery within the complex’s sewer network.
Screenshot from the 3-D tour of the heat recovery demonstration site
Tipperary: We completed our experimentation using the pilot heat recovery system at a meat processing plant. A 3-d tour of this demonstration site which describes it in detail is available here. Our experimentation with the heat recovery system showed that operational parameters like the temperature of the feed water to be heated and ambient temperatures had a significant impact on the operation of the heat recovery system and need to be properly considered in future designs.
Madhu Murali out in the wilderness of the Ireland-Wales region! (Blessington, Co. Wicklow)
I hope you enjoyed this small journey across the Ireland-Wales region and through some of the achievements of the Dŵr Uisce project.
I have loved my time working on these projects and being part of this research team. I’d particularly like to acknowledge and thank all my colleagues and our stakeholders for their assistance and understanding over the last two years!