United Nations Sustainable Development
Goal 6: Clean water and sanitation
Water consumption tracking. Measure the total volume of water used in the university that is taken from mains supply, desalinated, or extracted from rivers, lakes, or aquifers.
UniSC is committed to protecting and conserving water, a most precious resource. We apply innovative techniques and building standards to minimise water use and plan to minimise impact on aquatic ecosystems.
Lake water
The UniSC Sunshine Coast campus is the low point in the wider Sippy Downs catchment area. At the low point of the campus are two lakes with a capacity for 130,000,000 litres of water. The lake water is part of an integrated catchment system that directs stormwater, rain and wastewater run-off through a system of swales and creeks before being collected for storage in two lakes on-site.
Untreated lake water is used for the irrigation of campus fields. On-site water treatment removes solids and modifies the lake water to produce potable standard water for use in the central energy plant and the cooling towers, which are a part of the campus air-conditioning system. Since this project has been implemented, the University has saved over 20,000 litres of mains water used per day, which also significantly reduces the cost.
Rainwater and wastewater treatment
The plant draws water from the lake via a low velocity screened intake arrangement, ensuring no flora or fauna is detrimentally affected by the water extraction process. This process greatly reduces the amount of potable water being sourced from mains with the dual benefit of lowering both emissions and water bills.
The water treatment plant consists of feed water pumps, holding tanks and various filtration components - complete with a filter backwash cycle. The capacity of the water treatment plant is sized for a peak flow of 15kL/hr to the cooling towers, and an overall processing capacity of 10kL per/hr. These values were selected to deliver the full amount of cooling tower makeup water during high cooling load requirements.
The treatment plant serving the cooling towers in the central energy plant (CEP) consists of the following elements:
- A foot valve at the centre of the lake and underground intake pipework to the pumps at the CEP
- Raw and filtered water storage tanks
- Glass media filtration system filtering water to 4 microns
- An ultra-filtration system with 0.03 µm nominal pore diameter for removal of bacteria, viruses, and particulates including colloids
- Suitable capacity for the use of the plant and future demand
- Full PLC control system
- Integration into the BMS
The plant is maintained and monitored daily and undergoes monthly water quality testing for biological contamination.
Lake water treatment allows more than 90% of the annual cooling tower and central energy plant water to be sourced from the lake in non-drought years.
Recycled vs Mains
Given the mains water consumption across UniSC campuses in 2024 of 33,992 kL at Sunshine Coast and 13,091 kL at Moreton Bay and the harvested water consumption of approximately 18,116 kL at Sunshine Coast and 2,964 kL at Moreton Bay, the percentage of recycled water being used was over 34% at Sunshine Coast and over 18% at Moreton Bay.
Rainwater tanks
The UniSC Moreton Bay campus captures and reuses rainwater from several tanks with a total capacity of 435,000 litres. A storage tank capacity of 325,000 litres was added to the Moreton Bay campus with the addition of three new buildings. Once the rainwater is harvested, it is recycled through the building for use in toilets and urinals.
The UniSC Sunshine Coast campus captures rainwater from the E Block in a 5,000-litre underground tank. The water is used in E Block's grey water system for toilets and urinals.
Summary
UniSC measures the total volume of water used in the university that is taken from mains supply, desalinated, or extracted from rivers, lakes, or aquifers.