Water Treatment H83WAT (10 credits)

Coursework Guidelines and Assessment

1. Background Your team works for Water Company based at Klang, Malaysia. The Water Company

provides drinking water to their customers and also treats the wastewater produced by

their customers. Their customers include the general public and numerous industries.

They also meet all the legislative requirements and regulations overseen by the

Environment Agency (for abstraction of water from, and release of water into the aquatic

environment) and Drinking Water Inspectorate (for drinking water quality). The Water

Company has several options they are considering to enable them to continue delivering

drinking water to their customers and clean the wastewater so it is fit for release into the

aquatic environment. Working within a team, you will be asked to deliver a presentation

and report on one of the following water scenarios and treatment options.

2. Coursework topics 1. Desalination plant: The Water Company is seeking to design and build a water

treatment plant capable of turning seawater into drinking water for their customers. The

board would like a recommendation on the water treatment plant to build and treatment

options required. Your team is tasked with selecting the most appropriate treatment technologies, and to justify the selection and your choice of the final process design.

2. Direct water reuse plant: The Water Company is considering designing and building

a water treatment plant which is pipe-to-pipe, directly reusing wastewater effluent for

potable drinking water use. The board would like a recommendation on the water

treatment technologies to use for building the plant. Include in your report and

presentation any potential and technical challenges of implementing this approach.

Would you recommend the Water Company invest in this water treatment process in the future?

3. Nitrate removal technology: The Water Company has identified that nitrates are a

big issue affecting the quality of drinking water. To deal with this problem and meet the

drinking water standard for nitrate, they have been blending high-nitrate water with low-

nitrate water sources. However with high-nitrate water sources increasing, they

recognise the need to design and build a nitrate removal treatment technology to reduce

the nitrate levels in source water. Your team is tasked with selecting the most

appropriate treatment and incorporating into a drinking water treatment plant. You need to justify the selection and your choice of the final process design.

4. Advanced wastewater treatment for phosphorous removal: The Water

Company has identified that phosphorous is a key pollutant in municipal wastewater.

One of their large wastewater treatment plants must reduce the amount of phosphorous

in their wastewater effluent to minimise eutrophication in the river that receives the

plant effluent. The board would like a recommendation on the water treatment

technologies to use for phosphorous removal. Include in your report and presentation

any opportunities for phosphorous recovery and associated economic drivers.

5. Water softening technology: The Water Company has identified a water source but

the level of Calcium and Magnesium and other metal cations in that source is high which

necessitates the removal of these ions. The board would like a recommendation on a

novel technology to soften the water. You need to justify the selection and your choice of the final process design.

3. Assessment The coursework exercise amounts to 30% of the total module mark and is made of two

component parts, the group’s presentation and the report document.

Presentations will be made during week 11 (15th April to 19th April 2013). Attendance is

compulsory at these presentations for everyone on the course. To ensure there is no

time advantage all groups will be required to submit their presentation PowerPoint file

and report on the same dates irrespective of presentation date. Submission of

PowerPoint presentation files will be by email to

Sivakumar.Manickam@nottingham.edu.my, and the report will be through the faculty

office as normal.

The submission dates are by the following dates. The usual rules will apply for the late

submission of coursework.

Assessment Submission date Delivery of

presentations

Report

12th April 2013 (before 4.30 pm) to the

Faculty office -

PowerPoint

Presentation

12th April 2013 emailed to

Sivakumar.Manickam@nottingham.edu.my

During week 11 (15th

April to 19th April 2013)

3.1. Report Structure The report should include the following sections and should be a short concise document.

The following format must be followed - Font type: Verdana, Font size: 10, Line spacing:

single, unbolded except for the title and any subheadings. Word limits are given for

guidance below:

• Executive Summary: Please provide a summary of your water treatment

assessment, particularly the key findings - 300 words

• Background: Provide an introduction to your water scenario and treatment

challenge - 600 words

• Discussion and Justification: Provide a concise report of your technology

assessment, include in your summary justification and evidence for the choices

and conclusions made - 1300 words

• Conclusions / Recommendations: 300 words

• References: unlimited

• Figures and Tables: To be included in the main body of the text, there is no

limit of the number that can be included as long as they are relevant.

3.2. Marking Scheme:

A. Group Presentation (Total 50 Marks) All members of the group are expected to contribute to a presentation on the topic set

for evaluation. This presentation will be strictly limited to ten minutes. After the formal

presentation the group will be asked questions from a panel assessing the presentation.

Marks will be awarded for the presentation itself (both the slides and the delivered

content) as well as a component given to how well the groups respond to questions, a

full breakdown of marks and indication of performance required are as follows:

Oral Presentation (20)

Clear presentation getting key points across clearly and to time 17-20

Clear presentation, some loss of clarity 13-16

Some good points, but overall message lost 9-12

Presentation lacking structure, hard to follow logic 5-8

Presentation has not logical progression, read from notes, dull 0-4

Response to questions and overall demonstration of understanding (20)

Excellent demonstration of understanding, respond well to questions 17-20

Good understanding of topic and clear response to questions 13-16

Average knowledge of the topic, some explanations unclear 9-12

Poor grasp of the topic, little insight or evidence of independent thought 5-8

No original though, poorly informed presentation and responses 0-4

PowerPoint presentation (10)

Excellent, clear presentation and use of graphics 10

Good presentation, some areas could be more polished 8

Average slide, possibly too much text in places / unclear images 6

Slides hard to read, poor presentation 4

Unclear slides, impossible to read or understand 2

B. Coursework Report (Total 50 marks) The group will produce a short summary of the water treatment technology assessment.

This will be submitted using the information under Section 3.1 and is limited to a set

length for each section. Due to the limit on document length, the text needs to be

concise and to the point. The summary document will be marked against the following

scheme:

References (10)

Up-to-date and complete 10

Reasonably up-to-date 8

Average 6

Not up-to-date 4

Too old / limited 2

Discussion (20)

Intelligent with original comments 17-20

Some original comments 13-16

Occasional comments 9-13

Few comments 5-8

No original comments 0-4

Summary and Conclusions / recommendation (10)

Realistic and follow on logically from the text 10

Satisfactory 8

Average 6

Poor 4

Unrealistic and un-founded 2

Additional Materials, Tables and Figures (10)

Excellent figures with clear explanation 10

Good figures with some comments 8

Some used, few comments 6

Few used 4

None used, no comments 2

3.3. Some General Comments • The best marks will be given to well-structured critical assessments that provide a

well-informed, reasoned review and discussion of the topic and treatment

technologies.

• Try to be quantitative in your assessment. Think of wider implications, for

example design considerations, financial costs / benefits, safety, plant operation

(not all of these will be relevant).

• There is not a right or wrong answer to the questions set. An educated decision

based on the information and evidence in the literature is required. To answer the

question it is best if a logical, evidence based conclusion and consensus view is

achieved.

• We are not looking for a literature review type work. Presentations that are

simply descriptive of the literature will rarely gain better than a low 2:1.

• It is important to use up to date information, review a wide range of sources,

from books to peer reviewed journal publications. Using one or two papers or

books from 20 years ago is not going to get you good marks.

• Simply lifting or plagiarising large volumes of text from books or journals will

result in zero marks. Care should be taken to correctly reference material.

Students are reminded that plagiarism is an academic offence.

4. Assignment of teams and coursework topics The teams and coursework topics assigned to each group is given below:

Team 1 8007768 Kho Shui Wei

8007790 Balaji Anand Bellam

8007852 Yap Wei Khang

8007918 Lee Pay Herng

Desalination plant

Team 2 8007826 Loke Siew Wei

8007899 K.Karinalili Rutheran

8008111 Fong Kok Leong

8008453 Chimbayo Stephen

Direct water reuse plant

Team 3 8007800 Chong Jared Sh'Ng Yuan

8007905 Vejayan Surendar

8008277 Tan Kok Jun

8805952 Liu Xiaoyu

Nitrate removal

technology

Team 4 8007771 Mendis Ayodhya Chiranjiv Adhiratha

8007945 Yew Eddie Chin Wei

8805872 Shanmuganantha Lohashenpahan

Advanced wastewater

treatment for

phosphorous removal

Team 5 8007931 Raviadaran Revathi

8805874 Omer Ahmed Abdi

8805978 Loh Xuejing

8806107 Poh Yong Wei

Water softening

technology

Team 6 8007798 Tan Wei Jun Robson

8007980 Nazeer Fathima Ruqqaiyah

8805948 Ramachandran Deepaluxumy

8806071 Md Ishak Nurliyana

Desalination plant

Team 7 8007860 Kho Gwendolyn Tian Yin

8008322 Shenkar Dhayalan

8805868 Foong Hua Yeang Anthony

8806125 Che Harun Mohammad Hakim

Direct water reuse plant

Team 8 8007773 Tan Michelle Siaw Yin

8806009 Thambirajah Cooberan

8806204 Rajiv Rohan Girish

8805713 Folarin Ahmed Atanda

Nitrate removal

technology

Team 9 8806067 Saravanan Mhthesvaran

8007919 Quadir Riasat Saquif

8806068 Krishnan Lavaneswaran

8806100 Ang Teck Yeong

Advanced wastewater

treatment for

phosphorous removal

Team 10 8007950 Teoh Su-Fern, Elyse Kymberly

8806134 Chan Wei Leong

8806238 R. Jagadish Priyanka

8007761 Lim Chang Nong

Water softening

technology

Team 11 8007864 Ho See Chai Desalination plant

8007862 Lee Pei Sean

8007758 Ramgoolam Keshav

8806026 Lukak Wani Tombe Logale