BlueInGreen To Celebrate HyDOZ Installation At Fayetteville Facility

BlueInGreen, a water-quality management firm cofounded by U of A faculty, has completed the full installation of its ozone disinfection system at the Paul R. Noland Wastewater Treatment Plant in Fayetteville.

The company, an affiliation with the University of Arkansas Technology Development Foundation, will celebrate the installation with city of Fayetteville officials and the public during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, June 8. The event will take place at the treatment facility, 1400 N. Fox Hunter Road.

In 2012, the city of Fayetteville and CH2M, a private company that manages the city's wastewater treatment facilities, contracted BlueInGreen to implement a pilot project using its gas dissolution system, which the firm has trademarked as HyDOZ. The project reduced nearly twice as many contaminants of emerging concern compared to the city's previous UV system and removed more than half of the contaminants to limits below detection.

According the United States Geological Survey, contaminants of emerging concern are chemical and microbial constituents from municipal, agricultural and industrial wastewater sources that researchers are documenting with greater frequency. Historically, they have not been considered contaminants.

Because of the success of the pilot program, BlueInGreen was asked to install a full system, the first of its kind globally at a wastewater treatment facility.

The ozone disinfection system is based on gas dissolution technology invented by U of A biological and agricultural engineering professors Scott Osborn and Marty Matlock. Their invention was patented by the University of Arkansas System's statewide Division of Agriculture and licensed exclusively to BlueInGreen.

Osborn has appointments in both the College of Engineering and Division of Agriculture. Matlock is executive director of the office for sustainability at the University of Arkansas and a professor in the department of biological and agricultural engineering.

Osborn and Matlock are co-founders of BlueInGreen and currently serve as technical advisors to the company.

BlueInGreen is headquartered in the Arkansas Research and Technology Park, which is managed by the University of Arkansas Technology Development Foundation.