MUNICIPAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT

ALBERTAN MUNICIPALITY LAGOON CASE STUDY

BACKGROUND & CHALLENGES

Municipalities often struggle with operations and maintenance of their wastewater treatment system. With increasing industrial and domestic growth, upgrading the conventional water treatment infrastructure to provide consistent water quality is expensive. Aging infrastructure cannot support population growth, and repair costs are really high. Across the world, lagoons are experiencing challenges with discharge compliance, capacity, and maintenance. Furthermore, municipalities and Native reserves typically cannot add a cell or build a treatment plant without additional funding.

Additionally, local wastewater has large amounts of phosphorus, ammonia, chloroform, total suspended solids (TSS), biological oxygen demands (BOD), and chemical oxygen demand (COD). When these nutrients are discharged into the environment without treatment, they cause disturbances to the ecosystem.


PROJECT DETAILS

Problem

  • Capacity issues due to increase population growth (current population of 3,000)
  • Compliance issues due to environmental discharge limits
  • Alternative solutions too costly ($12M+ for expansion, $50M+ pipeline construction)

Project Specifics

  • Average treatment volume: 100 gpm
  • Project duration – 4.5 months
  • Water treated to irrigation standards and sold to nearby golf course

PROJECT GOALS

  • Treat water with ultrafiltration technology to irrigation standard. reusable, primarily targeting total suspended solids (TSS), and chemical oxygen demand (COD), total coliforms, and fecal coliforms.
  • Increase membrane permeate flux production
  • TSS < 50mg/L, COD <100mg/L, total coliforms <300MPN/100ml, fecal coliforms <100pg/mL.

The SWIRLTEX LAGOON UNIT 

Swirltex demonstrated a full-scale pilot at the lagoon. Swirltex cut down disposal costs by ultrafiltering the water and allowing it to be fit for reuse. The reclaimed water ended up being used in a golf course after met irrigation standards, resulting in a profit for the municipality.

Swirltex‘s water treatment saved the municipality money in several sectors: like energy savings, cutting operational costs, and eliminating the need to outsource water.

The Swirltex Lagoon unit is one of our most popular services we offer, and our clients rest assured that our system is able to handle extreme weather conditions like freezing ice and snow. The lagoon unit is a portable system that not only increases the capacity of a lagoon, it also provides effluent that can be reused for numerous useful agricultural and industrial applications. The SLU membrane system can treat high strength waste and produces high-quality, reliable effluent for environmental discharge or industry reusable water. Additionally, our lagoon unit increases lagoon capacity through aeration and mixing of wastewater.

OUR  RESULTS

The Swirltex Lagoon Unit satisfied our clients with exemplary results and significant benefits. The most notable benefits of our lagoon unit included:

  • Increased biological activity due to hyper-oxygenation and mixing of concentrate
  • Recovery of clean effluent, suitable for reuse
  • Reduction in TSS, BOD, NH3 due to mixing and O2 transfer from cell to cell
  • Increase in lagoon ToC due to increased biological activity

Traditional upgrades cost over $1 million with additional CAPEX. There can be schedule risks and they require regular maintenance as well. Effluent quality can end up varying rather then showing consistent permeate production results. With declining performance, the water discharged to the environment.

Swirltex’s technology treats water at a $/m3 or low CAPEX. Our wastewater solutions are flexible and maintenance is included in our service. As our client, you pay for performance with high-quality permeate guaranteed. This high-quality effluent can be sold for recover and reuse. Our water treatment system is modular and the infrastructure and can be shared between communities.

The Swirltex system’s efficiency is unmatched when it comes to to energy usage and success in cold climates. We are proud to say that our return clients show content and satisfaction with our wastewater lagoon unit. Swirltex has aided municipalities all across the province and is looking forward to expanding across the country in the near future.

Do you want to see exemplary results with wastewater filtration? Contact us for more information or queries.