Conference Papers | 2009 Conference Papers

OVERCOMING DIFFICULTIES IN PROVIDING ACCURATE CONTINUOUS ONLINE DISSOLVED SULFIDE MONITORING AT GOLD COAST

Ian Johnson, Wastewater System Performance - Senior Officer, Gold Coast Water
Shaun Corrie, Project Manager, Gold Coast Water/Advanced Wastewater Management Centre, University of Queensland
Kelly O’Halloran, Coordinator Process Assessment and Research, Gold Coast Water
Alan Neethling, Project Manager, DCM Process Control

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INTRODUCTION

Located in the south-east corner of Queensland Australia, the Gold Coast enjoys a tropical climate with warm temperatures, and boasts a number of extensive waterfront property developments. Gold Coast Water (GCW) manages wastewater catchments designed to cater for this particular type of landscape including a high water table and high salt water ingress. With a total of 600+ wastewater pump stations (PS) operating within all GCW catchments, high wastewater retention is inevitable, producing the ideal environment for the production of dissolved sulfide (H2S).

As part of an ARC-funded joint project with GCW, Sydney Water and the Advanced Water Management Centre, University of Queensland (UQ), work was completed to investigate the production of H2S. A critical aspect of the evaluation was:

• How do we know where sulfide is produced – how can we effectively measure it within
   the reticulation system?
• How do we measure the production – can we build a model to predict this?
• How do we control/remove it?

As this type of investigation has not been undertaken on such a critical level in the past, delivering such reliable field monitoring data was underestimated and proved a challenging task

.
This paper will outline the work completed by GCW to obtain critical and reliable data from different sampling and monitoring equipment and locations.