Over the last 2 years Richard Allitt Associates has led the team working on the UKWIR project looking at Fats, Oils & Greases (FOG) assessing the existing situation and looking where the opportunities lie for progress
Central to the work has been the development of a bespoke technical tool which will assist all Water and Sewerage Companies (WaSCs) to develop FOG strategies at catchment scale.
FOG is a major issue for the water industry which currently has to deal with over 300,000 sewer blockages every year. This comes at a substantial cost to the companies themselves and therefore ultimately to their customers. FOG is known to be a constituent in the majority of these blockages, being the main cause of between 10-40% of them.
Bearing in mind the economic consequences of FOG this research was aimed at better understanding ‘where the Industry currently is’ in relation to the sources and quantities of FOG in the sewerage network and also ‘where the industry could be’ . The future for the industry could either be through FOG elimination or extracting the potential economic benefits from its recovery either at source or from within the sewerage network; or indeed a combination of both elements.
This research project is vital for the industry to make an economically viable as well as environmentally responsible decision in how best to strategically tackle the FOG problem.
The 2 years of in-depth research covered a literature review, a quality testing programme, quantitative research & analysis, research into source control techniques as well as the investigation of recovery techniques.
This week the research team presented their long, median and short term strategies that have been developed for the WaSCs to outline the best ways to manage FOG within their catchments.
- The short term strategy lays out the framework of objectives and further research that is required over the next AMP period to allow well informed FOG strategies to be put in place for AMP 6.
- The median term strategy looks at the key changes and questions that will need to be addressed over AMP7 and AMP8.
- While the long term strategy set out the perceived long term goal of all WaSCs for AMP9 and beyond.
The research highlights many key issues which have not been previously measured and most importantly offers a way forward for the industry and examines all the latest tools and techniques available.
The final report with all its in-depth findings, including the Economic and Technical Tools will be available from UKWIR later this year.
If you would like to know more about how we can advise on FOG issues please get in touch on 01444 401840