The Savings Are Blowin' In At Port Washington Wastewater Treatment Plant

By Lee Ann Hellums

The municipal wastewater treatment plant in Port Washington, Wisconsin, is located on the picturesque shore of Lake Michigan, so it’s essential that their plant performs as designed.

“We have our beach, our marina, fishing, and we also take a lot of drinking water out of the lake,” said Dan Buehler, Superintendent of the City of Port Washington WWTP. “We take great pride in providing this service to the community and residents.”

Over 500 million gallons of wastewater is processed through this plant every year. Providing the air for the aeration tank is an Atlas Copco ZS 110+ VSD screw blower that the facility has had for eight years. “It’s very critical that we have a blower that operates 24/7 without failure, and that is exactly what the Atlas Copco blower has provided,” Buehler explained. “When we researched blowers it was a long process. We were kind of leaning in the direction of getting a tri-lobe blower. Then I talked to another community that was also investigating getting another blower and they were leaning toward new screw blower technology. The nice thing about screw blower technology is it’s very efficient from low speed to high speed, across the whole width of the curve.”