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Manual Provides Guidance for Plant Evaluations

There is an ongoing need to optimize wastewater treatment plants because of population growth, the addition of new service areas, more stringent treatment requirements and, in some cases, the need to replace obsolete equipment and technologies. The most cost-effective plant upgrades occur when facilities are utilized to the maximum capacity. The savings realized from more effective use of existing facilities throughout North America could easily be in the range of billions of dollars.

Wastewater managers need a comprehensive and systematic approach to determine the capacity and performance of existing treatment facilities. They also need to identify and evaluate plant upgrade options and select the most appropriate and cost-effective options.

The newly released manual, Integrated Methods for Wastewater Treatment Plant Upgrading and Optimization (04CTS5) provides step-by-step procedures for both initial and detailed evaluations of the individual unit processes, plant-wide. The methods cover capacity determination and performance improvement. They follow the sequence of operations typically designated in the process flow diagram of a wastewater treatment plant, including sludge treatment processes.

The initial chapters describe the desktop evaluation approach for the whole plant and the plant monitoring needs to conduct detailed evaluations. Subsequent chapters include methods and tools for the integrated evaluation of hydraulic capacity, process capacity and performance. For more information on the manual, please contact WERF Program Director Lauren Fillmore.

Nov. 10, 2009