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The wastewater treatment effort in Phoenix has kept pace through a combination of results-driven equipment upgrades — particularly its solids pumping function — and a renewed focus on equipment maintenance. On a daily basis, the 91st Avenue Wastewater Treatment Facility handles better than 150 million gallons of sewage, processes over two million gallons of sludge, and removes 100 dry tons of processed “cake” for sanitary landfill disposal.

Few operations have a need for good, workable, reliable contingency plans as do wastewater treatment plants. Where other industries can deal with issues such as plant disruptions or maintenance downtimes by stopping operation, departments charged with handling and treating our wastewater simply don’t have that luxury. Establishing such an alternative approach became “job one” for the City of London (Ontario) when its incinerator, the primary tool in its disposal effort, reached its end of life. Looking at an extended downtime period and expensive landfill disposal fees city officials searched for an alternative and found it with the addition of a Schwing Bioset wastewater treatment system.

When construction finally wraps up in 2010 and the last of four hot wind-box fluid bed incinerators is online, the GEB facility will be one of the largest and most modern wastewater treatment plants of its type in the world. Capacities will have been increased from 336 Megalitres/day (MLD) [89 million gallons/day (MGD)] to 516 MLD (136 MGD) – enough additional capacity to see the Region of Peel into 2031.

It has been said that the only constant in life is change, and the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) serving Ypsilanti, Michigan and surrounding areas is certainly doing its part to prove out that adage. Through it all, the focus on quality throughout the plant has never wavered. Nowhere is that more evident than in the facility’s sludge treatment area. A complete solids handling system, including four Schwing Bioset KSP 65 pumps and a series of sliding frame silos, provides primary and backup service, ensuring multi-level redundancy— and peace of mind—to this model of WWTP efficiency. Consider this fact regarding the solids handling facet of the WWTP at the Ypsilanti, MI plant: Every day, enough biosolids material is processed through the plant to fill a football field two feet-deep

Changes and upgrades are hardly a new thing at Kelowna. The treatment plant, originally constructed in 1913, has undergone any number of overhauls to keep pace with population growth in one of the most desirable areas in all of Canada. When the most recent expansion plan is complete, the Kelowna plant will keep their original Schwing Bioset KSP 17V(K) operating as a backup role for a new Schwing Bioset KSP 45V(HD)L and SD 350 screw feeder. Learn how this expansion:

• Resolved what Kelowna WWTF called their “Achilles heel”
• Helped position the Kelowna WWTF to take a more sustainable approach to managing their biosolids and create a sale-able product (OgoGrow)

Heavy-Duty Pumps "Take the Cake" At Detroit's Massive WWTP

The wastewater treatment process is made up of individual segments, each linked to the next, each vital to its overall effectiveness. Occasionally though, one piece of equipment has such challenging demands placed upon it that when it proves itself—and continues to do so for years—it bears mention. Learn how a pair of Schwing Bioset KSP 110V(HD)L pumps at the Detroit Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP):

• Take high solids-content cake from the dewatering operation to either incineration or a truck loading area
• Pushes cake, dewatered to well over 20% dry sol- ids content more than 500 linear feet, and takes it up five stories
• Move better than 100 wet tons of dewatered material per hour

Almost everything about the Stewartstown Borough’s WWTP speaks to its diminutive size. Though it’s located on 20+ acres, the facility itself occupies a footprint of less than an acre. What the plant lacks in size, capacity and cost, however, it more than makes up for in overall performance. In fact, since expanding, the facility has improved the quality of water being discharged into nearby Ebaugh Creek and, with the help of a Schwing Bioset system, creates better than 120 dry-tons per year of Class ‘A’ Biosolids—all of which is used by area farmers. Learn how the Stewartstown Borough WWTP could be the poster-child for today's economy and efficiency.

Pump Helps Backfilling Operation 'Fill the Gap' for Mexican Mine

Paste backfilling, the process by which a combination of tailings, water and cementitious materials are blended and used to fill voids in underground mining operations, provides a broad, impressive range of benefits. These can include an improvement in safety, the ability to make subsequent surface development possible, a sensible solution to the ever-present problem of what to do with tailings, and more. But while creating the paste is one issue, getting it to the mine stopes— which in this case can be anywhere from 1.5 to 2 km away—is another one entirely. Learn how a KSP 140 (HD)XL pump from Schwing Bioset helped to make that happen.

Alabama’s rich mining tradition—a history that dates back nearly two centuries—and the economic lift it provides, have not been without their downside. But the Birmingham wastewater treatment plant, which once simply landfilled biosolids from its operation, now converts it to a Class ‘A’ material and uses it to affect area strip mine reclamations. Download the full application report to learn how a pair of KSP 50 sludge pumps from Schwing Bioset have helped turn land that was once an eyesore into vibrant and pristine land once again.

‘Muck Pumps’ Keep Mexico City Subway Extension Moving Forward

Today, the capital city of our neighbor to the south boasts the sixth largest population in the world, and sits on one of the most unstable subgrades on the continent. As a result, new construction faces performance challenges generally not encountered in bedrock-based projects, often prompting contractors to call upon specialty equipment to address those needs. In this application report, find out how Schwing Bioset's "muck" pumps helped tunneling crews deliver their thick mixture from a boring machine to waiting trucks on the surface.

Though it is well past its boom times as a supplier of iron ore to the world, the Iron Range area of northeast Minnesota has a continued need for infrastructure support to those who call the area home. The residents reply upon the half million gallon per day (gpd) Colerain Bovey Taconite Wastewater Treatment Plant. The WWTP completed an expansion including a new approach to biosolids disposal, which includes a Bioset reactor from Schwing Bioset to produce Class 'A' biosolids.

Prior to the early 1980s, if poor soil conditions prevented a mining operation from safely accessing a rich vein of ore, that company had little recourse but to abandon the area in question and lose the ore contained within. Today, however, techniques such as underhand cut and fill mining, in which cemented mill tailings are used to backfill the mined-out stope, allowing subsequent stopes to be cut beneath previously mined areas, have established themselves as a viable alternative for working in such conditions. As a result, many companies are pulling high quality ore from areas once viewed as unreachable. Montana's Stillwater Mining Company has been successfully employing this approach for more than a decade, and with the help of a KSP 80H(K)R pump from Schwing Bioset to deliver the paste for that process, has literally 'gone where no man has gone before.'

The Southerly Wastewater Treatment Plant sets the standard with their sludge disposal efforts. Using a quartet of heavy duty pumps and a number of sliding frame components from Schwing Bioset, Inc., cake can either be routed directly for incineration or sent to a pair of storage silos. Once in the silos, the material is readily available for truck-loading and transport.

Drawing from a wide range of sources, the Glens Falls Wastewater Treatment Plant accepts a broad range of materials. The product diversity, coupled with impressive long-term equipment performance, has helped the plant remain viable in serving the city and surrounding areas.

Water is a critical element in any mining effort. When that water contains solids with trace amounts of gold, there is an effort to focus on material recovery. Such is the case at the Turquoise Ridge gold mine, where a pair of Schwing KSP-50 sludge pumps are being used to get dewatered material to a site where its highly-valued content can be recovered.

Wear is the enemy of any wastewater treatment plant and forward-thinking plants will always have a contingency plan in place. For the Southwest Water Reclamation Facility, their contingency - designed to deal with a pair of worn, aging digester tanks - involved bypassing the tanks entirely and processing biosolids through a Bioset sludge treatment process.

Many potash producers expose the granulated product to a mist of water late in production, then quickly dry it - creating a shell around each granule - in what is called a 'glazing' step. This offers better resistance to degradation and a higher quality product. While a number of different drying methods exist, the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan reports that its Allan, SK, plant, by combining higher concentrations of water with the use of fluid bed dryers from Schwing Bioset, has significantly lowered material degradation rates.

Wastewater treatment plants are continually facing challenges and are thinking outside of the box to improve their operations. In addition to the City of Buffalo, the Bird Island WWTP serves other neighboring communities. Getting the plant to a point where they could efficiently accept sludge from these communities was no small undertaking. Read about the installations and how Schwing Bioset's push floor bin and biosolids piston pump have risen to the challenge. The pump has its work cut out for it, taking material that is in the 26-28% solids range and sending it more than 65 feet straight up.

It’s a dilemma faced by many wastewater treatment facilities but hits small to mid-sized plants particularly hard. Finding the most cost-effective way to dispose of biosolids is a problem which, left unaddressed, can adversely impact a plant’s economic and environmental viability. The Immokalee Water and Sewer District (IWSD) was looking at just such a challenge in 2006 when it was utilizing drying beds to create a Class B biosolid and spending roughly half a million dollars annually to dewater and haul excess sludge from that process to a regional landfill. A pending change in regulations regarding application of such biosolids, coupled with a realization that they were not only squandering the economic potential held in those biosolids but also perpetuating a practice whose time for replacement had clearly come, the District looked at a number of alternatives. It found its answer in a facility redesign centered around use of the Bioset process (Schwing Bioset, Somerset, WI) to create a Class A biosolid. Today Immokalee WWTP has a handle on its disposal, has reduced associated charges by better than two-thirds, and is using that newly-created product for area application.

A surprise can be a wonderful thing — great for a birthday party, terrific in a horror film and generally welcomed by all. Businesses, on the other hand, tend to prefer things to remain constant, measurable, and predictable. That same tenet holds true for water treatment plants which, while used to dealing with daily fluctuations, thrive on sameness and repeatability. So when a new plant that Davidson Water, Inc. had recently inaugurated started producing levels of solids almost double what it had anticipated, the company worried that all its advance planning was for naught and the dewatering facet of the process was doomed. However, one of the key components in that effort, a new screw press from Schwing Bioset (Somerset, WI), met the challenge, giving plant operators the results — and the peace of mind — they needed.

When the Seneca (S.C.) Water Treatment Plant embarked on a recent expansion project, its overall goals were fairly straightforward: eliminate the use of chlorine in purification, relocate its new chemical treatment process, and upgrade the alum sludge dewatering operation. On that last point, plant officials opted to replace an outdated and difficult to maintain batch filter press with a different technology altogether — a fully-automated (Schwing Bioset) screw press — to handle its dewatering needs. In doing so, they not only eliminated an ongoing maintenance headache, they also dramatically improved the efficiency of their dewatering operations as well as their overall residuals management operation.

Much like the State of Florida itself, the Water Conserv II facility, located in Orlando, is all about change. Almost since its inception in 1961, the Water Reclamation Facility (WRF) has been undergoing periodic upgrades, process changes and, at times, major overhauls to keep pace. So it should come as no surprise that, when confronted with the need to replace major anaerobic digestion components that were impacting capacity, all options were on the table. And when the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) indicated that newer, tougher regulations would be impacting continued production of their Class B biosolids product, a range of alternatives was examined. The end result of those efforts is a new Class A Exceptional Quality (EQ) product created through use of the Bioset Process from Schwing Bioset, Inc. (SBI, Somerset, Wisc.) which effectively creates 120,000 pounds of field-ready fertilizer product per day.

The strength and resilience of the wastewater treatment industry can often be found in the innovative solutions brought to bear to address the challenges it faces. And those solutions are not being employed solely by WWTPs in big cities or even larger municipalities, but often by small or mid-size operations — entities like the Russellville (Arkansas) Pollution Control Works Facility, for example. Faced with a situation in which they could no longer land-apply their Class B biosolids, plant officials looked for alternatives and opted to upgrade their operation to create a Class A product. In doing so, they’re finding value in their byproduct and have eliminated the need to simply waste it or — as they’ve reluctantly done in the past — landfill it. A big solution from a smaller operation? Not surprising at all.

Effective wastewater treatment is predicated on equal parts science and planning. The science element of that premise includes keeping abreast of the latest technology to best manage both the treatment and disposal of biosolids. For the Sangamon County (Illinois) Water Reclamation District, that has meant rethinking its approach to biosolids, particularly in the area of dewatering prior to land application. Once solely dependent upon liquid applying its Class B byproduct, the District’s Sugar Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility recently upgraded its process to include a pair of fully-automated screw presses and a Class B alkaline stabilization system from Schwing Bioset, Inc. Today, with a viable option to that liquid process in place, the plant is generating more than 17,000 lbs. of Class B cake monthly, and has peace of mind that its biosolids effort is poised for future growth.

When the City of Prattville, Alabama, recently chose to upgrade its Pine Creek wastewater treatment facility, it spared no effort in doing so. While they had made smaller, incremental modifications in the past, this time around they took the plant from simply adequate to boldly forward-thinking, designing it to be viable and effective for at least the next quarter century. Included in the wholesale changes was a rethinking of its solids handling capability which, up to that point, was both basic and costly. Today, the Pine Creek Clean Water Facility uses a new approach to aeration, dewaters through a pair of new screw presses, is generating a Class A biosolids for area land application, and is now accepting sludge from a nearby sister facility. In this case, being up a creek is definitely a good thing.

When an upgrade to the biosolids dewatering component at the Westbrook/Gorham Regional WWTP was needed, plant personnel looked at several different available technologies. Handling secondary sludge alone is challenging, and after an extensive trial and evaluated bid process, they opted for a screw press from Schwing Bioset Inc. Today, sludge leaving the plant is averaging just above 20 percent solids, and the Westbrook/Gorham Regional WWTP has dramatically reduced costs associated with hauling and landfilling their material. Are they pleased? To quote the locals: “Ayuh.”