Filtration and separation technologies are the core of water treatment processes, and in many cases, they can be critical process bottlenecks.
The Baia Mare Aurul gold mine in North Western Romania suffered a historic catastrophe in January 2000, when its dam burst, streaming out 100,000 cubic meters of waste water, largely contaminated with cyanide, commonly used in the process of mining gold, into tributaries of the Tisza River, a major waterway in Hungary.
The cities of Littleton and Englewood, CO, just south of Denver, share a wastewater plant — the Littleton/Englewood advanced wastewater treatment (AWT) plant located in Englewood. The 7886 m3/hr (50-mgd) Littleton/Englewood AWT plant serves more than 300,000 residents in the Denver metropolitan area. The facility also receives sewage from 21 districts within a 75 square mile service area. Plant effluent is discharged to the Denver metro area’s major watershed, the South Platte River.
Arlington County’s Water Pollution Control Plant (WPCP) in South Arlington, VA, is located on 35 acres of land squeezed into a commercial/residential neighborhood less than a mile west of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The facility treats flows from nearly all of Arlington. In addition, nearly 20 percent of the plant’s flow comes from neighboring localities such as Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Falls Church. Effluent from the plant is discharged into Four Mile Run to the south, which feeds into the Potomac River and, ultimately, the Chesapeake Bay.
In 2007, Greenville, SC-based Western Carolina Regional Sewer Authority (WCRSA) conducted a rigorous performance test on a new tertiary treatment technology to assess its ability to effectively remove nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N) without using excess amounts of methanol at its Lower Reedy Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP).
As a result of China’s rapid economic development in recent years, the country has implemented more stringent environmental standards. Local environmental protection departments now require most urban wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) to apply strict enforcement measures to meet Class IA effluent discharge standards according to the Discharge Standard of Pollutants for Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant (GB18918-2002).
In spite of the recent abundance of water, many of California’s aquifers continue to balance on the edge of water scarcity. Decades of overpumping have reduced the amount of ground water available to supplement surface water resources diminished by drought. The Pure Water Monterey Ground Water Replenishment Project (Monterey Pure), addressed the need to replenish a local aquifer, by piloting Advanced Water Treatment (AWT) processes, to determine the best method to convert secondary wastewater into a pure water resource.
Now in operation for well over two years in the Malambo, Colombia, the Microclor® system has proven itself in terms of reliability and safety. According to management, the clear, vertically-oriented cells and the system’s open architecture allow for easy inspection and simplify any minor maintenance that might be required.
Veolia furnished West Deptford Energy with a BIOSTYR® Biological Aerated Filter (BAF) and Hydrotech Discfilter system, allowing effluent from a municipal wastewater plant to be reused, with a treatment capacity of 7.35 MGD, in the operation of their new “green” energy station.
Significant innovation had occurred in the 17 years since the TrojanUV4000™ was installed at the Murfreesboro Water Resource Recovery Facility. Advancements associated with system efficacy, simplified maintenance, and energy efficiency had been introduced, all of which correlate to cost savings. Such advancements can all be found in the TrojanUVSigna™ – the UV system that was selected for the upgrade.
The New Rochelle Wastewater Treatment Plant is located in the Westchester County, New York, discharging to the Long Island Sound. It serves a population base of 65,000 people and is permitted to treat average flows of up to 20.6 MGD. Operating with primary clarification and pure oxygen-based activated sludge treatment since a 1979 upgrade, the plant only removed BOD and TSS from the wastewater.
Access to clean, safe, fresh water is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. By some estimates over 1.5 billion people face water scarcity issues that directly threaten their health or economic welfare on a daily basis. More concerning, the impacts of climate change and global population growth are expected to exacerbate these issues to impact over 2.3 billion people by the year 2050. These sobering facts are why six of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are focused on providing access to clean, safe water. Part of solving this challenge is reducing industrial water consumption to conserve water resources.
As part of Toray’s MEMBRAY MBR series, the NHP (New High Performance) module features thin membrane flat sheets that are densely packed into easily interchangeable cassettes. These cassettes allow for a higher packing density than what was originally thought possible with flat plate designs. The thin membranes are also highly flexible and allow for more movement, resulting in increased vibrations during aeration. This helps dislodge sludge and improve cleaning efficiency, all with less energy use.
The AquaPrime system utilizes a disk configuration and the exclusive OptiFiber® cloth filtration media to effectively filter screened, de-gritted, raw municipal sewage. This proven technology easily handles significantly higher solids loading rates compared to secondary clarified effluent (by a factor of 3 to 5 times) with the added ability to sustain a low TSS concentration, making it an ideal solution for both wet weather treatment and primary treatment in lieu of conventional sedimentation systems.
Veolia Water Technologies provides clients with mobile water solutions utilizing Reverse Osmosis technology. With applications in utility steam system make-up water, process water purification, water scarce areas, or where water reuse or recycle are required due to costly wastewater surcharges restricting discharge.
LuminUltra Wastewater (QG21W) is the key to a new level of efficiency in biological wastewater treatment plant operation! QG21W provides the ability to measure the size of the living biomass population (Cellular ATP, cATP), its relative health (Biomass Stress Index, BSI), and suspended solids activity (Active Biomass Ratio, ABR) at any point in the process. Use this information to manage return sludge pumping rates, air and nutrient dosages, and to proactively identify and eliminate toxicity.
The WesTech RapiSand™ ballasted flocculation system is a high-rate clarification process combining rapid mixing and multi-stage flocculation, followed by sedimentation. RapiSand™ sedimentation is extremely fast and can be applied in a wide variety of suspended solids removal applications.
The FilterWorx® Automatic Control System by Leopold is a complete filter control package consisting of all instrumentation and control equipment for the automatic monitoring and control of municipal water filtration systems.
The WesTech COP™ Spiral Blade Clarifier is the result of research and design focus on building a better clarifier. Each COP Spiral Blade Clarifier is designed for the specific process requirements of each plant.
The Sludge Sucker™ unit is a cable-driven sludge removal mechanism that provides cost-effective and efficient removal of lightweight sludges, such as alum or ferric hydroxide, or light iron and manganese precipitates from rectangular settling basins.
Filtration has been around for a long, long time, so it may be that most treatment plant operators feel pretty informed about its capabilities. But hearing from Brian Frewerd, Director of Application Engineering with Parkson Corporation and Water Talk guest, will likely prove enlightening. Frewerd provides background on sand filtration for tertiary treatment applications, followed by insight on notable technology improvements and performance milestones
Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) are not new, but they are the subject of renewed interest among utilities, and for Carollo Engineers Vice President Andrew Gilmore. He sat down with Water Talk's Todd Schnick and Kevin Westerling to discuss the MBR renaissance and the reason for their rise in popularity.
Jon Loveland, Global Practice Leader - Alternative Water Supply at Black & Veatch, shares insight on a major development for membrane bioreactor (MBR) systems and potable reuse.
If you don’t need the performance of an ultrafiltration membrane but also want to avoid the large footprint of a conventional media filter, you might want to consider FiltraFast extreme rate compressible media filters. As Ryan Hess, Director of Advanced Separation with SUEZ Water Technologies suggests in this Water Talk interview, “They provide roughly ten times the hydraulic loading rate of conventional media filters.”
Toray Membrane USA introduced an aptly-named product at WEFTEC 2017, the NHP (New High Performance) module for membrane bioreactors (MBRs). Toray's Peter Waldron sat down with Water Online to discuss how the NHP, which features thin membrane flat sheets densely packed into easily interchangeable cassettes, differs from current industry offerings and how these features benefit MBR operation.
With 29 locations, 1,600 employees and research facilities in Japan, Italy and the United States, DeNora is one of the largest disinfection and filtration companies in the world. As Gary Lohse, Regional Sales Manager for De Nora, explains in this Water Online Radio interview, the acquisition of the former Severn Trent manufacturing division coupled with De Nora’s product innovation strength is driving enhancements to some of the most respected brands in the water industry.
Delivering the best MBR experience, Smith & Loveless announces the new TITAN MBR™.
Matt Shoemaker, North American Sales Manager for Leopold -- A Xylem Brand, talks through the features of the Type 360 Underdrain, a bolt-down system with a design that allows for longer filter runs, higher efficiency, less backwash water, and extended media life. With a flow concept that avoids dead zones and patented self-cleaning capabilities, the Type 360 is easy to own and operate. Get a close look and hear more about its unique properties in this video.
The Leopold brand of Xylem has been providing the most efficient water and wastewater treatment filtration systems available since 1922. The Leopold difference – effectively backwashing 100 percent of the media.
In this video, we discuss the curious science that is the inclined plate settler (also known as a Lamella). The process is a bit counter-intuitive, but through an interesting experiment, this video shows how they work. Inclined plate settlers can reduce required footprint by 80% compared to traditional gravity settling.
De Nora brings a long history of innovation to familiar water treatment technologies like DE NORA TETRA filtration products. For more than 55 years, De Nora has been providing filtration process expertise and global innovation with DE NORA TETRATM Denite® denitrification systems, DeepBed™ tertiary AWT filters, underdrains for water and wastewater treatment, and submerged aerated biological filters.
Wastewater filtration is often part of the tertiary treatment process that involves the final removal of suspended particles from water that has passed through both the primary and secondary treatment phases and immediately precedes disinfection. As the water passes through the filter, residual suspended material and bacteria is trapped in the filter and are removed from the filtered water. Passage can be blocked by physical obstruction, biological action, adsorption, absorption or a combination of ways. Wastewater filtration is usually the final step in the solids removal process.
With regulations increasing around wastewater effluent, the use of ultrafiltration and microfiltration systems in further polishing effluent has grown. Sand or activated carbon filters can provide a media for bacterial decomposition of nutrients, converting nitrates into nitrogen gas. The rise of water reuse applications is also fueling the increasing use of filters during the final polishing stages of the wastewater treatment process.
