720235WasteLESS (Waste-water Low Energy Scraping Solution)ClosedGRD Development of PrototypeInnovate UKA&J Water Treatment Ltd (A&J) is an established company with many years of experience in the design and manufacture of equipment for the waste water treatment industry. This extensive knowledge of the processes and engineering issues involved has enabled it to invent a novel design for the scraper assembly used in clarification tanks. The scraper machinery retrieves the settled activated sludge that forms the basis of further waste water processing and the performance of a scraper is therefore crucial in maintaining the biological environment that is essential for the successful breaking down of organic matter in the raw effluent. The proposed WasteLESS design is a novel concept in wastewater treatment in that it eliminates both the need for external power sources to drive the rotation and the requirement to build the traditional bridge and central island structures inside the tank. With the design requiring less steelwork and with all serviceable parts external to a tank, it will not only be more economical to manufacture and maintain but it will also provide a number of performance advantages. Tank function relies on creating and maintaining a “sludge blanket” layer at the bottom of the tank, formed by solid matter slowly settling within the tank, such that the water drawn off the top of the tank is clear and pure enough to be fed into the local water courses. Any structures within the tank disturb the laminar nature of the settlement and so the WasteLESS design will greatly improve the stability of the fluid flow and thus significantly increase the effective throughput that can be obtained from a particular tank size. Waste water treatment is under increasing pressure from population growth, variable rainfall patterns from climate change, and increasingly demanding environmental legislation. Among its many advantages this Project will extend the capacity of existing treatment plants and provide a significantly cheaper option when building new.