Heathrow Hits Environmental Milestone
VWT UK has completed a pioneering glycol removal plant at Heathrow Airport
Heathrow needed a biological wastewater treatment plant to treat the glycol runoff from the airport runways prior to its discharge into the river Crane.
An organic compound from the alcohol family, glycol is commonly found in antifreeze solutions and, as such, is used as a de-icer on aircrafts during the winter months.
VWT UK was selected to design, supply, install, commission and operate the plant. This means that the leading provider of water treatment technologies and services will continue to operate the new plant for the next nine-years - having secured a further operations contract which began in December 2019.
How does our wastewater treatment plant work?
To begin with, the innovative glycol removal plant takes water from a runway collection lagoon and processes it, before discharging it into a separate four-part clean water lagoon. Once this process is completed, the wastewater is safe to be released into the nearby River Crane, a tributary of the River Thames.
The pioneering technology functions as an aerobic wastewater treatment method and includes an AnoxKaldnes™ Moving Bed Biological Reactor (MBBR), Hydrotech Disk filter, drum thickener, chemical conditioning and sludge treatment.
"Working with Veolia Water Technologies on this project has been great, we had some testing conditions and difficult situations early on during the project but the Veolia project team really turned site performance around"
- Adam Strange, Project Manager at Heathrow.
Want to learn more?
Download the full case study and find out
how we helped Heathrow reach its goals
