Research project: Zero Leakage 2050

Leakage from pipes is a major issue in the water industry, being an issue, not only in environmental terms, because of wasting an important natural resource, but also in economic and health terms, from both an environmental and cost perspective. UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR) have identified leakage as one of their strategic priorities and have recently set up the Zero Leakage 2050 initiative, aiming to address the question “How will we achieve zero leakage in a sustainable way by 2050 ?”

The UK water companies delivered major reductions in leakage levels over the period 1995 to 2005. However the rate of reduction has slowed greatly over the past 10 years, and over the UK as a whole 22% of water produced is still lost through leakage; recent research has shown that many new polyethylene networks are responsible for a significant proportion of leakage.

In 2018 3 PhD projects commenced, part funded by UKWIR

• Hydrant dynamics for acoustic leak detection
• Combining Steady state and Transient Methods for Acoustic Leak Detection
• Leak noise characterisation for buried plastic pipes
• Pipe Wave Modelling for Acoustic Leak Detection

A further project ‘Pipe Wave Modelling for Acoustic Leak Detection’ commenced in 2020, also part-funded by UKWIR’.

Two further projects are currently being advertised

• ‘Novel Sensing for Acoustic Leak Detection’
• ‘Optical Fibres for Acoustic Leak Detection’

Dr Muggleton is supervising these projects along with Dr Emiliano Rustighi, Professor Paul White, Dr Neil Ferguson and Professor Phil Joseph.