Texas Wastewater Plant Includes GE Pretreatment

The city of Abilene, Texas has completed its installation of GE's membrane bioreactor technology, the LEAPmbr wastewater treatment system, as part of a major upgrade to the city's Hamby Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The Hamby project is the first part of a multi-phase drought response initiative aimed at addressing the city's low reservoir levels which have fallen to below one third capacity.

Hamby uses GE's pretreatment coupled with a reverse osmosis system downstream to discharge treated wastewater at more than 35 Ml/d a day into the city's primary reservoir, Lake Fort Phantom Hill, to increase clean water supplies for Abilene's residents and businesses.

Texas-based civil, environmental and geotechnical engineering firm of Enprotec/Hibbs & Todd has overseen the design and construction of the Hamby upgrades. According to the firm's president, Scott Hibbs: "Because the LEAPmbr system is enabling the facility's treated water to meet stringent Texas Commission on Environmental Quality water quality standards, the plant can discharge its advanced treated water directly into the reservoir and immediately help to begin to boost the city's reservoir water levels."

The Abilene WWTP's upgrades were completed and commissioned in December 2014, which was 14 months after GE received the order for its LEAPmbr system. According to GE, typical projects of this size normally take 24-30 months to complete.

For the project, GE's LEAPmbr package included the design and supply of the entire membrane filtration scope along with several elements of the biological treatment process. At its heart is GE will remotely monitor the Hamby WWTP via its InSight software, a cloud-based data management platform that is part of GE's Predictivity suite. This will help to optimise the system's operation and reduce running costs GE said.