Effluent Water Reuse for Townsville

Govan, Joel Blake (2017) Effluent Water Reuse for Townsville. [USQ Project]

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Abstract

The Townsville region is currently (2017) experiencing a drought period where by the regions water supply is reduced to reliance on the Burdekin river water supply through the Burdekin Haughton Water Supply Scheme (BHWSS). The BHWSS requires pumping to move the water and is currently a cost of $27,000 a day to the rate payers. Water supply security is an issue for Townsville and the dry tropics with low rainfall, arid climate and high-water demand. A water security issue of this nature warrants alternative solutions to be investigated. One such solution is effluent water reuse, that this research project investigates specifically for Townsville.

Regional water supply security has previously been investigated by Townsville City Council (TCC). The proposed solution was to duplicate the BHWSS pipeline increase the supply capacity to Townsville from 130ML/day to 328ML/day. The investigation also flagged effluent water reuse as a possible future consideration for the region and the point at which this dissertation picks up and develops.

A Water Balance Model (WBM) was developed for the Ross River Dam (RRD) and validated against historical dam levels. The WBM was used to investigate various scenarios of effluent water supply timing to test for bulk storage changes. The key outcomes addressed by this dissertation are:

• The water restriction influence of non-potable effluent water reuse for Townsville.

• Burdekin Haughton Water Supply Scheme (BHWSS) reliance reduction resulted from non-potable effluent water reuse for Townsville.

The literature review process identified a large volume of effluent water that was largely unusable for neither potable or non-potable reuse without the implementation of reverse osmosis (RO) thus restricting the potential reusable volume. This was due to the low-lying nature of Townsville and the high infiltration inflow of salt water into the waste water system. Conclusions drawn from the work suggest that whilst effluent water reuse does have a positive effect on Townsville water restriction and a reduced reliance on the BHWSS, the volumes being considered are too small to have any large implications for the region.


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Item Type: USQ Project
Item Status: Live Archive
Additional Information: Bachelor of Engineering (Honours)(Civil)
Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Civil Engineering and Surveying (1 Jul 2013 - 31 Dec 2021)
Supervisors: Baillie, Justine
Date Deposited: 09 Sep 2021 04:26
Last Modified: 09 Sep 2021 04:26
URI: https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/40803

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