Groundbreaking Groundwater Treatment
Some of the biggest issues confronting drinking water professionals — and the public at large — are water scarcity, emerging contaminants, and the rising costs associated with supply and treatment. A collaboration between Carollo Engineers and AdEdge Water Technologies seeks to greatly mitigate these concerns.
AdEdge are well known for removing contaminants such as radionuclides, arsenic, perchlorates, and chromium-6 from groundwater, but now they have a new tool in their arsenal. Developed by Carollo, biottta is just now being applied in the real world, starting with Delano, CA.
Carollo’s R&D practice director, Jess Brown, sitting alongside AdEdge’s Chad Miller, described the technology during an interview with Water Online Radio:
“biottta stands for biologically tailored two-stage treatment approach, and it’s really a whole treatment system concept. Cost, of course, is a big driver for treatment technology selection. That cost is not just the capital side, but O&M costs — how much you have to pay to keep a system running.
“[Another] big driver for biottta is the concept of waste streams. Historically, we can take technologies like ion exchange or reverse osmosis and put them in just about anywhere and take the waste stream from that and discharge that to a number of different places at a fairly low cost. That’s no longer the case. Options of discharging to, say, a brine line or a sewer … you can’t do that without spending a lot of money. In some cases, you can’t do it at all. The whole premise behind biottta is that we want to take contaminants and we want to destroy them.
“The technology itself is very simple and straightforward — a two-stage, fixed-bed biological treatment approach. But it’s a complete system, and that’s why we’ve been working together with AdEdge for a while now, in converting the science and the process and the engineering into a full system that’s integrated, automated, and robust — pretty much one of those technologies that you can apply for multiple contaminants.
“In California, you’ve got nitrate and perchlorate and chromium six and volatile organic chemicals. Historically, you’ve had to add on about three or four different unit processes to treat all those contaminants. biottta takes care of all of those in a single step, and it converts them to harmless end products.”
Tune in to the interview below for more information on biottta, and hear Chad Miller discuss AdEdge’s full range of treatment solutions.
AdEdge │ A ChartWater Center of Excellence: An international water treatment technology and solution provider specializing in the design, development, fabrication and supply of specialty medias, legacy and innovative technologies that remove a wide range of contaminants from water.