The Deep Tunnel Sewerage System (DTSS) project is an innovative and cost effective solution to meet Singapore’s long-term needs for used water collection, treatment and disposal. It is conceptualised as a means to relieve land use in land scarce Singapore and also to convey and treat used water reliably.

The first phase of DTSS consists of a pan-island deep tunnel sewer and a network of link sewers to convey used water by gravity to a large water reclamation plant at Changi for treatment before the effluent is being discharged through a deep sea outfall. The Project is scheduled for completion in 2008.

In future, the DTSS will replace the existing six water reclamation plants and about 130 pumping stations. It will free up prime land currently used by the existing plants and stations, as well as the buffer zones surrounding the plants. The area is estimated to be 1000 hectares which is equivalent to the size of two new towns in Singapore.

In the long run, due to economies of scale, it is more cost effective to implement DTSS than to continue to upgrade and expand existing plants.

The DTSS will form an integral part of the water loop, allowing PUB to channel used water to WRPs and then on to NEWater factories, where high grade reclaimed water is produced thus securing a sustainable source of water supply for Singapore. By collecting and treating every drop of used water, DTSS helps to “close the water loop”.

This project also won the Asean Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award.

By Public Utilities Board 

Rapid prototyping (RP) is a new class of manufacturing processes that involves quick fabrication of three-dimensional components by material addition, instead of material removal or forming. Since 1994, the NUS research team has been working on developing processes as well as materials for RP machines and systems suitable for various engineering applications. The team has developed a machined called High Temperature Laser Manufacturing (HTLM) System to directly sinter different material systems without major post-processing; this machine for rapid fabrication of functional parts has received a patent from USA. They have also established a model for benchmarking various RP processes and machines. Recent applications of their developed RP technologies are towards bio-medical engineering and micro-fabrication, and these have resulted in notable achievements that include awards for research projects and papers.

By National University of Singapore , Dept of Mech Engrg

A complete physical layer transmission design with an elegant and novel code mapping and modulation scheme has been proposed for the current IEEE 802.15.4 standard on wireless personal area network (WPAN) to achieve 6x data rate improvement with flexibility in data rate / range trade-off, without compromising the stringent spectrum and the low cost/complexity requirements.

After a vigorous scrutiny process and intensive competition amongst well known companies around the world, our scheme is adopted in prestigious IEEE wireless standard, leading to potential explosive growth in WPAN market.

The success of this project has brought forth visibility of Singapore innovation capabilities and qualities.

By Institute for Inforcomm Research (I2R), Singapore

The SIMTech-NTU collaborative research, led by Dr. Zhang Ying and Prof. Soh Yeng Chai, has made crucial breakthroughs in fiber optics components design and fabrication. The developed optical signal processing and detection techniques enable signal processing in the all-optical domain with extremely high bandwidth. The designed innovative all-fiber prototypes including optical interleavers, spectrum equalizers, AOTFs, multiple ring lasers, EDFA gain controllers, and weak signal detectors have significant implications in optical communications and precision measurements. These inventions provide efficient and economical means to upgrade existing all-optical systems to high-bandwidth data networks, so that modern high-capacity data services can be realized.

By Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology of ASTAR (SIMTech) and Nanyang Technological University, School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering

By Nanyang Technological University, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering