Team

Rowland Minall

Rowland joined Aqua Enviro in 2013 with a technical background as a process design engineer. Since 2013, he has worked to grow and expand the scope of technical service offerings within the business. He has held several roles within the business and maintains his skills as a technical trainer, presenter and technical lead within the business.

Within Aqua Enviro, Rowland is responsible for our day to day activities. He firmly believes that innovation and understanding are critical to both our individual and collaborative successes. Key to this understanding is learning from the needs of our clients and the shaping our services to ensure that what we deliver is of maximum value; values and skills that are core to the Aqua Enviro team.

Matthew Smyth

Matt’s expertise lies in the application of activated sludge processes, anaerobic digestion and applying novel technologies that address challenges posed by our clients.  Working with the team and our specialised laboratory Aqua Enviro develop solutions for even the most complex wastewater or AD problems.

Matt has more than 15 years of practical experience in the water, waste and industrial sectors. He has led on many WRAP, Zero Waste Scotland, UK Water Company and UKWIR contracts.

As Technical Director for Aqua Enviro, Matt plays a key role in the strategic development of the business, overseeing investment programmes to grow new services, research and development, staff knowledge and skills.

He is an experienced trainer, trouble-shooter, project manager, expert witness and solutions provider.

Matt is also a member of the CIWEM Wastewater Management panel.

Sarah Brown

Sarah has over 20 years marketing and event management experience. She joined the company back in 2000 and has successfully delivered over 150 technical conferences and seminars; establishing Aqua Enviro as one of the UK’s leading wastewater conference providers.

Sarah work closely with the technical team to create events that address the practical challenges and emerging industry issues.  Sarah and her team also manage two annual conferences; the European Wastewater Management Conference and the European Biosolids & Bioresources Conference which both attract over 250+ attendees from across the globe.   In 2020 both these events were successfully delivered virtually and were attended by a record number of delegates.

Sarah and her team also offer an Event Management service – past clients include UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR), Constructed Wetland Association (CWA), Newcastle University and the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM).

Sarah is also responsible for Aqua Enviro’s marketing and works closely with the Business Development team to develop and deliver a range of activities to promote our technical services and raise brand awareness.   Sarah is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and volunteers as the Education and Events Ambassador on the CIM Yorkshire Board.

Dr David Tompkins

David is an environmental scientist with a multi-disciplinary background encompassing horticulture, soil science, composting, anaerobic digestion, wastewater treatment, biowaste valorization, sustainability and policy implementation.

David is a technical consultant with Aqua Enviro, specializing in various aspects of bioresources: HACCP, regulatory compliance, product development and knowledge exchange – the latter including both training and communication of technical information to non-technical audiences.

David chairs the Aqua Enviro Innovation group, which acts as an incubator for new products and services that meet our clients’ ever-developing needs. This also acts as a vehicle to enable collaboration with third parties that offer services complementary to our own.

As a subject matter expert on digestates and other bioresources, David frequently contributes to consultation responses from the perspectives of both the waste and water sectors, and is never happier than when forced to solve strategic problems requiring systemic change.

Dr Mikael Khan

Dr. Mikael Khan is Aqua Enviro’s Business Development Manager. He has over 17 years experience managing operations and teams, developing products and process plants, traversing the journey from technical concepts through to manufacturing and scale-up, and business development. He has worked across a range of industries focusing on energy and water in product development and business development roles.

He has a keen interest in industrial water treatment processes and has been involved in the rollout of new technologies for waste water treatment in the oil and gas, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, semiconductor and food & beverage sectors. This has involved developing a deep understanding of a range of water treatment technologies from primary, secondary, and tertiary treatment processes, identifying and developing solutions to help clients overcome their water treatment challenges.

He has experience of managing multi-site projects, process and design engineering teams across the UK, Europe, MENA and China and has been involved in setting up businesses and operations in the UK and China.

E. mikael.khan@aquaenviro.co.uk 

Dean Herron

Dean is our Technical Manager specialising in providing waste treatment solutions for the industrial sector. Recent studies include:

• Feasibility study and process design for an effluent treatment plant at Lucite International, Stockton.
• Piloting and process design for the incorporation of a UASB process at Novartis effluent treatment plant, Grimsby.
• Treatability of high strength sodium nitrate effluents, and the development of process design for a novel biological denitrification effluent treatment plant.

He has also gained substantial experience in aerobic and anaerobic wastewater treatment technologies, having managed several laboratory and piloting studies, site optimisation and troubleshooting studies and more recently project managed the commissioning of a large-scale anaerobic digestion and sludge processing facility at Riverside STW, Rainham.

Working with technical experts at Aqua Enviro, Dean has developed a refined lithium tracer method for the quantification of mixing efficiencies and active zones in anaerobic digesters. This has been successfully applied to several anaerobic digesters, activated sludge plants and anoxic selector zones.

Kate McKinley

Kate has worked for Aqua Enviro since 2005 and manages the site/operational team who work throughout the country. She has a wealth of experience in wastewater, aerobic and anaerobic treatment.

Kate is currently project managing numerous sampling and flow and load contracts for large water companies. For example, Aqua Enviro has a 5-year framework contract for wastewater sites throughout the Severn Trent region, this includes all non-infrastructure sampling on wastewater sites; Kate oversees the project from the initial contact, organising resources on site through to issuing results to the client. She is in constant communication with the clients to ensure their expectations are exceeded and manages the data collection, analysis and interpretation for R&D projects.

Kate has a wealth of practical experience on site and has undertaken numerous pilot plant trials on industrial sites.

In addition, she has an extensive array of laboratory skills and is experienced in testing a variety of determinants for physical, biological and chemical analysis. She has run AD reactors in the laboratory and can examine samples for microscopic analysis, identifying bacteria and filamentous species which could cause bulking and foaming on site.

Frances Woodhead

Frances has 17 years’ experience working in the events industry, after joining Aqua Enviro back in 2003.  She works with the Events Development Group that uses Aqua Enviro’s wealth of industry experience to create a conference and events programme that addresses the challenges of the water sector.

Frances leads on the flagship European Biosolids & Bioresources Conference & Exhibition; working with the independent steering committee to produce a topical and engaging conference programme. Now in it’s 25th year and annually attracting over 250 delegates from around the world.

Frances has managed events on behalf of several large clients including CIWEM, the Constructed Wetland Association (CWA) and Newcastle University. The events team have a proven track record for delivering successful bespoke events and are happy to work flexibly to provide an event management service tailored to suit the client.

Frances also supports with wider-company branding, social media, web development and optimisation, digital marketing and communications.

Charlotte Elliott

Charlotte is Laboratory Manager and was Aqua Enviro’s first apprentice, joining the team in 2012. Since joining Charlotte has completed and qualified from a two-year advanced apprenticeship and continued her progression from process scientist to laboratory manager.

Charlotte has gained valuable skills in the routine analysis, bespoke testing, method development and project management in the field of water, wastewater and biosolids. Additionally, she has gained experience from working on a number of wastewater treatment works, as well as within the laboratory environment. As a result, Charlotte has been involved in and managed a variety of different projects including treatability trials, commissioning, service contracts, feasibility studies assessing novel treatment processes, flow and load studies and bench scale Aerobic/ Anaerobic Digestion (AD) trials.

Utilising her knowledge and experience Charlotte has successfully carried out training for external clients, both on their sites and in house on activated sludge microscopy. As well as training junior members of staff in the routine analysis and bespoke testing which has taken place at Aqua Enviro.

Dr Maryam Kabir

Maryam obtained her PhD in the field of Anaerobic Digestion from the Swedish Centre for Resource Recovery (Sweden). Her main focus was the use of novel feedstock and pre-treatment techniques for AD process.

Maryam’s role at Aqua Enviro involves provision of operational support, process control and optimization for food waste, farm fed AD and wastewater treatment plants. She is involved in delivery of variety of projects and research works such as; nutrient recovery, sludge dewaterability and scaling issues in wastewater treatment and anaerobic digestion systems. She is also active in delivering training courses regarding AD operations.

Maryam has expertise in developing and validating models for wastewater treatment plants using a modelling software (BioWin). Calibrated model enables our clients to make fully informed decision before applying necessary process alterations with purpose of increasing energy potential and minimizing OPEX costs, etc.

Paul Pickard

Paul joined Aqua Enviro in 2018 after 11 years in the field of emergency spill response and industrial cleaning.  Since joining, Paul has acquired a good knowledge of the principles of wastewater treatment and anaerobic digestion, enabling him to confidently liaise with clients about their requirements.

Paul works closely with Aqua Enviro’s in-house laboratory and technical team to coordinate the delivery of integrated solutions to a wide variety of problems.

Paul holds the NEBOSH General Certificate as well as a BSc in Environment, Economics and Ecology.

Dai Ziye

Dai has an educational background in Applied Chemistry (BSc), Green Chemistry (MSc) and Environmental Engineering (EngD).  His doctorate research was sponsored by Scottish Water and Northumbrian Water and was about the mass and energy balance investigation of actual wastewater treatment works. He has good knowledge of wastewater and sludge treatment, laboratory analysis, process monitoring, and process modelling.

Since joining Aqua Enviro as a graduate process engineer, he has taken part in various domestic and industrial wastewater treatment projects, including:

• Activated sludge MBR for highly saline industrial wastewater,
• Technical and economic appraisal of small on-site wastewater treatment for remote households
• Investigation of removal mechanism of metal and trace organic in domestic activate sludge process

Dai is also research active and has been involved in multiple in-house innovation programs.