Water management is undergoing a transformation towards integration, source control and ecological thinking. In the EU, the Water Framework Directive can be considered as a driver towards this new approach to water management. Innovations are deemed necessary to deliver this ideal of water management. In this thesis efforts by water sewerage companies in England & Wales to rectify agricultural pollution at source are viewed as an organisational innovation towards more sustainable water management. These source control interventions can help achieving the goals of the Water Framework Directive by reducing diffuse pollution from agriculture, fostering participation in water management and by reducing overall cost of implementation. This thesis contributes to understanding the process of change in water management by developing a model of the innovation-decision process. Insights about how innovation and therefore change can be influenced is generated by applying this model to the process of source control intervention adoption by water and sewerage companies. This research employed a flexible research design using comparative case studies. Each of the 10 water and sewerage companies in England and Wales represented an individual case. Data were collected in two phases using semi-structured interviews with selected water and sewerage company representatives. Thematic analysis, recurrence counts and content analysis were applied to analyse interviews. It was found that water companies are likely to contribute towards integrated approaches to water management, since there is a trend to adopt source control intervention. Change in water management is influenced by the interaction of factors from the domains: ‗Natural-Physical‘, ‗Organisational Characteristics‘, ‗Regulatory- Institutional‘ and ‗Innovation Attributes‘. The rate of change by water and sewerage companies is governed by a combination of asset characteristics, environmental state changes and the funding cycle. Furthermore, innovation is triggered by direct regulation and regulation that requires the gathering of information. Contrary to this flexible or framework regulation performs better in guiding the direction of change.

The diploma thesis is focused on the design of water antigravity treadmill, which is unsatisfactory for current products, and has shortcomings in terms of ergonomics. Design of the device takes into consideration the connection between water and man and, also the ergonomic requirements for all users. The design was significantly influenced by the choice of materials, which enabled round shaping of the device. A technical innovation is the built – in wheelchair access ramp. The device is multi – purpose, suitable for a wide range of patients and athletes. Thanks to the built – in ramp, space requirements had been significantly reduced.

Yes / Reverse osmosis (RO) has become a common method for treating wastewater and removing several harmful organic compounds because of its relative ease of use and reduced costs. Chlorophenol is a toxic compound for humans and can readily be found in the wastewater of a wide range of industries. Previous research in this area of work has already provided promising results in respect of the performance of an individual spiral wound RO process for removing chlorophenol from wastewater, but the associated removal rates have stayed stubbornly low. The literature has so far confirmed that the efficiency of eliminating chlorophenol from wastewater using a pilot-scale of an individual spiral wound RO process is around 83 %, compared to 97 % for dimethylphenol. This paper explores the potential of an alternative configuration of two-stage/two-pass RO process for improving such low chlorophenol rejection rates via simulation and optimisation. The operational optimisation carried out is enhanced by constraining the total recovery rate to a realistic value by varying the system operating parameters according to the allowable limits of the process. The results indicate that the proposed configuration has the potential to increase the rejection of chlorophenol by 12.4 % while achieving 40 % total water recovery at an energy consumption of 1.949 kWh/m³.

The rationalisation of drug potency using three-dimensional structures of protein-ligand complexes is a central paradigm in medicinal research. For over two decades, a major goal has been to find the rules that accurately relate the structure of any protein-ligand complex to its affinity. Addressing this problem is of great concern to the pharmaceutical industry, which uses virtual screens to computationally assay up to many millions of compounds against a protein target. A fast and trustworthy affinity estimator could potentially streamline the drug discovery process, reducing reliance on expensive wet lab experiments, speeding up the discovery of new hits and aiding lead optimization. Water plays a critical role in drug-protein interactions. To address the often ambiguous nature of water in binding sites, a water placement method was developed and found to be in good agreement with X-ray crystallography, neutron diffraction data and molecular dynamics simulations. The method is fast and has facilitated a large scale study of the statistics of water in ligand binding sites, as well as the creation of models pertaining to water binding free energies and displacement propensities, which are of particular interest to medicinal chemistry. Structure-based scoring functions employing the explicit water models were developed. Surprisingly, these attempts were no more accurate than the current state of the art, and the models suffered from the same inadequacies which have plagued all previous scoring functions. This suggests a unifying cause behind scoring function inaccuracy. Accordingly, mathematical analyses on the fundamental uncertainties in structure-based modelling were conducted. Using statistical learning theory and information theory, the existence of inherent errors in empirical scoring functions was proven. Among other results, it was found that even the very best generalised structure-based model is significantly limited in its accuracy, and protein-specific models are always likely to be better. The theoretical framework developed herein hints at modelling strategies that operate at the leading edge of achievable accuracy.

[pt] O presente trabalho busca discutir mecanismos em pauta na literatura em relação à injeção de água de salinidade otimizada com os resultados de 10 (dez) testes de escoamento bifásico óleo/água para 2 (dois) cenários carbonatos e 1 (um) arenito. O principal objetivo foi estudar o efeito de íons potencialmente determinantes (Ca, Mg, SO4, NaCl), além da temperatura, no fator de recuperação e curvas de permeabilidade relativa óleo-água. Em relação a carbonatos, avaliou-se se Ca/Mg e SO4 tinham algum papel na alteração da molhabilidade da formação e, em caso positivo, se esse efeito era exacerbado em ambiente de baixa salinidade. Em relação a reservatórios areníticos, comparou-se a injeção de água dessulfatada com água do mar diluída. Dos testes de deslocamento realizados em amostras de arenito, observou-se que água do mar diluída, injetada após água do mar dessulfatada foi capaz de, em média, acrescer o FR em 2,8 por cento e em reduzir o Sor de 2,1 por cento. Quanto ao cenário carbonato A de alta temperatura avaliado (95 graus Celsius), observou-se que água otimizada, quando injetada após água dessulfatada, foi capaz de aumentar o FR em 15,3 por cento e diminuir o Sor em 12,1 por cento. Ainda, quando se introduziu água otimizada de forma secundária, observou-se redução no Sor em 4,6 por cento e aumento do FR em 5,9 por cento quando comparado com a injeção usual de água. No carbonato B, injeção da água otimizada após água dessulfatada levou a um acréscimo de 10,1 por cento no FR e diminuição de 7,1 por cento no Sor. Tanto no cenário arenito quanto nos carbonatos, não houve produção adicional de óleo quando injetado água do mar após a injeção de água otimizada. Isso corrobora a ideia de que o fluido customizado permitiria atingir o máximo de eficiência de deslocamento. / [en] The present work seeks to discuss possible mechanisms in the literature based in the results of 10 (ten) oil / water core flooding experiments in 2 (two) carbonate scenarios and 1 (one) sandstone scenario Rock and oil samples from real reservoirs were used in experimental conditions of temperature and pressure close to the field reality. The main objective was to study the effect of Ca, Mg, SO4, NaCl and temperature on the recovery factor and oil-water relative permeability curves.Regarding the carbonate scenario, it was evaluated whether Ca / Mg and SO4 had any role in altering the wettability of the formation and, if so, whether this effect was exacerbated in a low salinity environment. For the sandstone reservoirs, the injection of desulfated water and seawater diluted were compared. From the displacement tests carried out in the sandstone samples, it was observed that the diluted sea water, injected after the desulfated sea water, was able to average increase the RF by 2.8 percent and to reduce the Sor by 2.1 percent. Regarding the hightemperature carbonate scenario evaluated (95 degrees Celsius) it was observed that the optimized water, when injected tertiarily, was able to increase the RF by 15.3 percent and decrease the Sor by 12.1 percent, in comparison to the desulfated seawater. In carbonate B, optimized water injection after desulfated water led to a 10.1 percent increase in the recovery factor and a 7.1 percent decrease in the residual oil saturation. Mainly, in both sandstone and carbonate scenarios, there was no additional oil production when sea water was injected after the optimized water injection. This corroborates the idea that the taylor-designed fluid achieves maximum displacement efficiency.

I Sverige användes det år 2010 ca 907 miljoner kubikmeter dricksvatten från kommunala uttag. Allt detta vatten måste kunna transporteras, vilket görs genom vattenledningar. För att dimensionera dessa krävs att man vet hur mycket vatten som skall distribueras och hur det varierar bl.a. beroende på när under dygnet, veckan och året som uttag sker. Vid dagens tillvägagångssätt för dimensionering av vattenledningar till nya områden använder man bland annat typexempel på förbrukningsvariationer under dygnet för ett liknande område. Dessutom används erfarenhetsbaserade värden på maxtim- och maxdygnsfaktorer. Dagens dimensioneringsätt har ej kunnat säkerställas på grund av otillräcklig och bristfälligt detaljerad data över förbrukningsmängd. Syftet med detta arbete är att säkerställa eller motbevisa dagens dimensioneringssätt. För att kontrollera dagens dimensioneringssätt har vi använt mätdata från Norrvatten och tagit fram nya dimensioneringsfaktorer. Genom att mäta vattenförbrukningen för 13 kommuner och jämföra mot varandra med hänsyn till invånarantal och fördelning över förbrukarkategorier har vi kunnat få ut olika dimensioneringsfaktorer. Examensarbetet har påvisat ett behov av en uppdatering vad gäller maxtim- och maxdygnsfaktorer. För att vidare studera faktorerna bör ett system införas för att kontrollera hur stor del av vattenförbrukningen som förbrukas av respektive förbrukarkategori på ett mer detaljerat sätt. / In Sweden, 2010, approximately 907 million cubic meters of drinking water was withdrawn from municipalities. All of this water must be transported, which is done through water pipes. To dimension these it requires that we know how much water that is to be distributed and it varies among others depending on the time of the day, week and year that the withdrawals occur. In today’s approach of designing new water pipes, amongst other ways, we use typical examples of consumption variations during the day of a similar area. In addition, arbitrary and experiential values of ‘ratio of peak hour to average day’ and ‘ratio of peak hour to average hour’ are used. Unfortunately today’s way of dimensioning water pipes has not been ensured due to inadequate detailed data on consumption quantity. The main purpose of this study is to confirm or refute today’s way of dimensioning water pipes. To verify this we have with detailed data from Norrvatten been able to see consumption quantity on an hourly basis which helps us assess today’s dimensioning process. By measuring the flow into 13 municipalities and then comparing them against each other regarding population size, distribution over categories of users and more, we have been able to get different dimensioning factors. In this report we can conclude that there is a need to update the factors regarding ‘ratio of peak hour to average day’ and ‘ratio of peak hour to average hour’. In order to further study the dimensioning factors, a system must be developed that can measure the precise consumer flow for different consumer categories on a more detailed level.