Before You Choose A Wastewater Treatment Technology, Ask These 5 Questions
By Louis LeBrun
Avoid costly mistakes and mismatched technologies by asking the right questions from the start.
When it comes to choosing a wastewater treatment strategy for a specific water issue, facility managers often start by asking themselves what the best technology is for addressing their contaminant. However, there are far more important questions that need to be answered first. Before jumping to technology, there are five foundational questions that every facility should answer first.
1. What is the water quality?
Industrial and municipal wastewater water quality is not captured by a snapshot. Accurate data comes in a detailed, historical view of a plant’s effluent over time that captures operational variability as well as seasonal effects on water quality. For this reason, water quality should be continually monitored, so that when it’s time to start planning an upgrade, all the necessary data is available. Ideally, understanding at least one full year’s worth of water quality information will yield the best results when crafting the best treatment strategy.
Depending on the industry, water quality can be affected by ambient temperatures, specific product on the manufacturing line, and rainfall or snowmelt for municipal treatment systems or industrial plants with open systems or combined stormwater/wastewater systems.
It is equally important to determine the correct analytical method(s) for contaminant detection since these may tie directly to certain regulatory requirements in the future. If your facility isn’t using the correct analytical methods, the data may be much more difficult to use when choosing the right treatment technology.
2. What are the goals?
Regulatory goals are structured around detecting target contaminants and setting reduction levels, but others may involve performance, safety, and efficiency targets. Still others may involve company sustainability goals and objectives related to the community, such as zero liquid discharge, odor issues, and aesthetics.
Deadlines are additional important information when discussing goals, especially when it comes to regulatory compliance. A deadline that is 90 days away will likely dictate a very different technical pathway than a deadline that is five years away.
Additionally, treatment goals may have layers of complicating factors. For example, one regulatory goal may be to reduce PFAS in wastewater discharge, but that goal will be affected by a plant’s ability to discharge to a publicly owned treatment works, or if it needs to discharge directly into the environment. A nearby community may require that a certain treatment works be installed to keep a nearby creek clean, AND not exceed levels for noise or odor, AND not be an eyesore to the neighborhood.
Goals may bump up against each other, and there will be tradeoffs. It will be important to know how rigid every goal is, and which goals take priority over the others. A full acknowledgement of every large and small goal and how those goals interact will set the stage for a more effective assessment of treatment options.
3. What are the operational capabilities?
Fair warning: This is a question often gets overlooked and can make some facilities more than a little uncomfortable.
This question primarily addresses the capabilities of the staff, from both a training and a capacity standpoint. How much added responsibility can existing staff take on? Does your facility have an adequate training budget to develop the necessary skills, and does it have enough people and capacity to take on a major upgrade? This question cannot be overstated, because if maintenance or operations can’t effectively use the new equipment or process, there is a very high probability the treatment goals won’t be achieved. If there are unmovable barriers — such as required maintenance or operations manhours that just don’t exist — it’s good to know that early.
Matching technology to operational capacity is the path of least resistance, but if it appears that there will be an unavoidable gap between where plant staff are and where technology must take them, there is a proven way to get them on board: early engagement and training. Involving staff early in discussions and getting feedback on potential challenges and solutions is a powerful way to get their buy-in. With time and training, EVERY operator can rise to the challenge if it’s clear how the new technology will help them do their jobs. Engaging them directly in technology decisions is a great way to do that.
Later, when facility management has narrowed down treatment systems under consideration, a pilot study involving all users is paramount to ensuring a successful deployment. Running a pilot to find the limits of the process — not just the best operating point — is the best method to ensure success.
4. What are the site restrictions?
In some cases, this question can be the most important one to ask. What kind of power does a site have access to? Does the site experience predictable, extreme weather during certain seasons that would stall construction — such as winter in North Dakota? How wide are the doors where the treatment equipment would go? What is the structural condition of the floors and the building?
Some site restrictions should be interpreted as more of how flexible a technology needs to be. This is especially true in the context of more volatile and unpredictable weather patterns. For example, when rain events dump three months of average rain in three weeks, what’s the scalability needed by the chosen system to manage flow that is well above average, several times a year? How does it work during repeated heat waves or deep freezes? How resilient does the system need to be to deal with wide swings of factors like these that cannot be controlled?
These questions and many more should not be answered after an equipment decision has been made. Treatment technology suppliers are typically prepared to guide customers in these decisions, but facilities should be aware of their own limiting factors before starting conversations with suppliers.
With a big enough budget, almost any of these can be fixed, which leads us to the final question:
5. What is the budget?
Answers to the first four questions will add or subtract from the budget. Generally speaking, the more complicated the scenario, the bigger the budget will need to be. A firm budget with a margin for cost escalation and hidden factors is a guiding light that will most assuredly help determine what technologies are possible.
The budget crafting phase should include a calculation of all the costs of failing to achieve the goals outlined in the goal setting phase. Non-compliance, poor product quality, failure to achieve sustainability — the costs of all of these will suggest how large the budget should be.
A complete budget also includes the time available, which also is influenced by the goals and their related deadlines. Just like cost overruns, time overruns are typical — and can also be costly. If a compliance deadline, for example, dictates that a treatment system be installed and operational by a certain date, facilities should be aware that certain technologies might overstress the time budget.
Know Thyself When Making Large Capital Decisions
Facilities that choose a treatment system by first having an open and honest understanding of their own limitations — whatever those might be — have much better success at identifying the perfect-fit technology. Project leaders tasked with upgrading treatment technology need to go through the intentional exercise of fully exploring their water quality, goals, site restrictions, operational and maintenance capacity, and budget before diving into the technologies that might serve them best. In taking this approach, facilities can save time and money, achieve regulatory compliance, reduce risk, and avoid frustration among all stakeholders.
Louis LeBrun brings over 25 years of experience in water and wastewater technology commercialization to the Axine Water Technologies team. Before joining Axine, he founded AqualytX, LLC, providing commercialization support and consultation to water technology companies and investors worldwide. With leadership roles at Hoganas Environment Solutions, X-Flow (Pentair), and Parkson Corporation, Louis has a strong track record across a broad range of process technologies. Louis holds BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering from North Carolina State University, an MBA from Duke University, and is a licensed Professional Engineer in multiple states. His diverse background and expertise drive innovation and growth at Axine in water and wastewater treatment.