Parthenon Computing were approached by Water Innovate to help turn an innovative vision into a real business opportunity. Water Innovate are a spin out company from the School of Water Sciences at Cranfield University with the purpose of moving new technologies out of the laboratory and into the commercial environment, helping the global water and wastewater industries streamline processes and become more efficient.

They needed to bring their new product, OdourSim, to the market and Parthenon were tasked with developing, refining and commercialising the software for this revolutionary odour-modelling package that dynamically predicts the generation and emission of odours from sewage treatment works.

OdourSim had to be capable of taking in numerous variables including information on the volume of sewage and weather patterns, and be able to map this onto a diagram of the treatment works. The software then had to carry out sophisticated computations to give predictive odour emission readings in different areas of the treatment works e.g. trickling filter or sedimentation tank.

Parthenon developed an application to incorporate these areas that also had:

• A user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) that felt and behaved like a standard Windows application allowing operation to be more intuitive to the user.
• Robust and efficient computational procedures for calculating underlying chemical and biological processes leading to odour emission.
• The ability to generate professional-format reports of a complete simulation.
• Disaster recovery functionality to allow application to resume simulation in the event of an interruption or hardware failure.
• Be able to integrate with data formats of existing modelling software such as GPS-X and AerMod.

With increased urban sprawl, sewage treatment works that were originally built away from conurbations are often now surrounded by them. With this urbanisation comes an increase in the amount of sewage needing to be treated and the capabilities Parthenon has built into OdourSim can assist with issues such as air pollution, planning permission, compliance with regulations and performance standards and is an invaluable tool when:

• Identifying emission problems in existing plants
• Extending existing water treatment works
• Designing and building new facilities

The technology bit

Parthenon's expert in computational modelling and bioscience was tasked with this project due to his experience in this area. The OdourSim application was built on the .NET Framework using the C# language and integrates with a backend database system for the storage of results. XML technologies including XSLT were used to allow the saving and loading of sessions, report generation and converting between data formats. A fully-functional Graphical User Interface with a windows feel also had to be designed at the front end.

What the customer says

"As a new start-up, embarking on a significant software development project is a daunting prospect, especially when it concerns your very first product. Parthenon's professional approach backed up by their first class people gave us the confidence to outsource this critical task and we have not been disappointed. Their development methodology helped us to clearly articulate our initial requirements and, perhaps more importantly, has been flexible enough to handle the inevitable changes in our thinking as the project progressed. We have also been impressed with their ability to embrace the underlying engineering and science of the specialist sector we operate in." Dr Steve Callister, Managing Director, Water Innovate Ltd

To view/download the case study as a pdf, click here (.pdf 110K)

Contact us in the UK or USA to discuss how we can add value to your business.