Dale Foster and Adrian Heneghan from HUBER Technology UK take a look at a proven technology which is set to see increasing uptake by both the UK water companies and major water users in a range of industrial sectors in the next few years.

Dale Foster and Adrian Heneghan: Developed over the past five years, HUBER’s fish and eel-friendly water intake screens are already in use across Europe and as far afield as South Africa and China.

In the face of growing water demand and increasing water scarcity, water is increasingly being recovered from rivers and seas – and mechanical cleaning using coarse and fine screening equipment is becoming a key option to address these challenges.

The technology is being used in Europe and beyond for mechanical cleaning in a range of applications, including:

• as cooling water in thermal power plants
• operation of hydroelectric power plants
• process water in industrial plants, chemical plants and refineries
• aw water for drinking water supply and sea-water desalination
• use for irrigation in agriculture and parks
• use of surface water (from rivers, lakes or pits) as a heat source for generating renewable heat (aqua thermal energy)

While this proven technology is less well known in the UK, the growing level of interest we’re seeing in both the municipal and industrial UK water sectors suggests that this situation is already starting to change.

Key role in design of water companies’ Strategic Resource Options

Firstly, the water companies are already progressing plans for the large and complex infrastructure projects set out in the RAPID programme which was formed to help facilitate the development and funding of new large scale Strategic Resource Options by the water companies.

In March 2026 RAPID began transitioning the SROs to a new combined gated process that brings together the RAPID and Ofwat’s Major Projects stages under the Major Water Infrastructure Programme which includes the 30 large-scale water infrastructure projects set out at PR24.

These solutions, which are primarily owned by the water companies themselves, include a number of water recycling schemes and water transfer schemes, together with 11 reservoirs and 2 desalination schemes.

Designed to address the looming problems of drought and water scarcity, the schemes coming down the line involve using water sources from rivers, sea water and wastewater from treatment works. Which is where the benefits of incorporating water intake screens into the infrastructure comes in.

Water intake screens have an important role to play in helping the water companies to circumnavigate supply issues they face in the event of drought / water scarcity by screening all these water sources prior to returning it to reservoirs and ultimately back into the potable water supply system.

While currently relatively few manufacturers have a focus on water intake screens, in the last few years, HUBER, our parent company in Germany have further developed their water intake screens specifically with these types of applications in mind – including fish-friendly and eel-friendly applications.

HUBER Technology is now able to offer five different types of screens for water companies working on these large-scale infrastructure projects – ranging from coarse screens to remove bulky objects like weeds and logs, down to fine screens aimed at removing smaller particles.

We’re already aware that the ability to offer fish-friendly and eel-friendly water intake screen solutions will be a key environmental benefit as part of the designs for these major infrastructure projects – the water companies and the Tier 1 partners involved in this process are already taking an active interest.

The equipment can be used to gently remove the fish and return them to the river or the watercourse. The fish-friendly systems can also help to steer the fish away from the screens safely – so they avoid getting into the screens at all.

Water intake screens offer industrial users opportunity to optimise operational processes and reducing production costs

For water-intensive industrial users, water intake screens can be used to great effect in helping them to both optimise their operational processes, mitigate their environmental impacts and reduce their production costs.

To take just a couple of examples, with more district heating systems coming on stream or under consideration by both public and private sector organisations, heat recovery is another key area where we expect to see water intake screens incorporated into the process. The embodied thermal energy in rivers, sea water and wastewater has made heat recovery applications from these sources a practical option. While it doesn’t have to be treated to potable water standards, it nonetheless has to be initially cleaned prior to progressing through further stages of the production process.

Likewise, we also expect to see the uptake of water intake screens in the design of the growing number of data centres planned for the UK featured in the news recently, which require large quantities of both energy and water. Heat recovery from their own internal process waters can be used to generate the energy for cooling purposes. Included in this is the need to cool water even if it is only final effluent being discharged to sewer. This water may sometimes be quite hot which can have detrimental effects on the biological processes in the sewer or the receiving water environment.

Water intake screens are a clever piece of technology which industrial users can incorporate for optimisation at key points in their operational processes, including:

• ensuring that the water feeding in at the initial process stage is sufficiently cleaned
• helping to keep stored water fresh by recirculating back into the river and re-screening when it is needed again
• enabling the user to take advantage of thermal heat in the water to generate electricity for heating and cooling purposes, cutting operational costs

The screens won’t necessarily need to be operating non-stop – if there is no debris in the water coming into the process they will not be activated. However, they will remain on continuous standby and be available all the time.

Summing up, the municipal and industrial sectors in Europe and beyond have already embraced this versatile water intake technology. The choice of the mechanical water treatment stages determines the stability of subsequent process steps and thus the economic efficiency and safety of the entire plant.

In March we held a well-attended webinar which reflected the growing interest in the UK and desire to understand more about the potential significant benefits water intake screens offer. We’re quietly confident that we will see a similar uptake here in the UK.

If you’d like to view a recording of the webinar to find out more, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to be sent a link to watch.