Gresham Smith’s Randy Booker and Srinivas Jalla to Present at WEFTEC

October 1, 2018

Gresham Smith announces that Randy Booker, Jr., Ph.D., P.E., and Srinivas Jalla, P.E., PMP, senior vice presidents in the firm’s Water + Environment market, are set to present at the Water Environment Federation’s 91st Annual Technical Exhibition & Conference (WEFTEC) on Oct. 1 in New Orleans, La. Through a case study on the Spartanburg Sanitary Sewer District (SSSD) Lower North Tyger River Reclaimed Water Treatment Facility, Booker will highlight alternative methods for degrading organic matter at publicly owned treatment facilities. Jalla will discuss the innovative recovery cleaning protocol developed for the membrane filtration system at the Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources’ F. Wayne Hill Water Resource Center.

Summaries of the presentations follow.

Bioaugmentation and Base Loading: Alternatives for Biodegradation of Acrylonitrile to Low Levels in Publicly Operated Treatment Facilities

The Spartanburg Sanitary Sewer District (SSSD) operates the Lower North Tyger River Reclaimed Water Treatment Facility. SSSD needed to expand and improve the facility to support economic development in the local service area while continuing to provide the community with long-term, reliable wastewater treatment. As part of the expansion and development, wastewater from an nearby industrial facility would begin flowing into the Lower North treatment facility.

During testing, the presence of acrylonitrile was identified. However, the NPDES permit that Lower North was operating under required the removal of the chemical. The project team considered pre-treatment at the industrial facility, as well as tertiary treatment at Lower North. Ultimately, the team settled on treatment at Lower North, but conducted tests to determine if bio-augmentation or base-loading would produce the best results and help avoid the need for an industrial wastewater pre-treatment system.

In this presentation, members of the project team will outline the methods used for the bio-augmentation and base-loading studies, lessons learned from the results and best practices for degrading low levels of chemicals and organic matter in publicly owned treatment facilities.

 

Restoring Tertiary Submerged UF Membrane Performance Using an Innovative, Patented Chemical Cleaning Procedure

Gwinnett County, Ga., owns and operates the F. Wayne Hill Water Resource Center, which is permitted to produce 60 million gallons a day (mgd) of high quality reclaimed water. The plant includes a 48 mgd submerged ultrafiltration (UF) membrane system that has been operational since 2005.  Ferric Chloride is used to reduce total phosphorus concentration to less than 0.08 mg/L to meet water quality goals for Lake Lanier, metro Atlanta’s drinking water source. The addition of ferric contributed to membrane fouling, which significantly reduced membrane permeability and affected system’s production capacity. Increasing the frequency of maintenance and recovery cleans using manufacturer recommended protocols weren’t effective in improving system performance.

Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources (GCDWR) funded various studies to perform membrane fiber autopsies, investigate various chemical formulations, perform bench-scale tests and perform full-scale demonstration trials to develop an innovative enhanced recovery cleaning (ERC) protocol to remove organic and inorganic fouling.  In this presentation, presenters will discuss the results of the enhanced recovery cleaning protocol after one year of implementation and how the patent pending ERC protocol allowed GCDWR to reduce cleaning chemical costs and delay the capital cost of replacing the existing membranes.