ThermoEnergy Corp. has announced the signing of a formal agreement with Earth Tech, Inc., part of AECOM, one of the world's largest environmental and infrastructure engineering companies, to act as construction manager and perform the civil engineering work for the company's multi-million dollar ammonia recovery process (ARP) project. The work will be sited at the 26th Ward Water Pollution Plant in Brooklyn, N.Y. The new facility will be the first commercial ARP project in the world and play a key role in helping New York City achieve its environmental goals.
"We are pleased to have Earth Tech/AECOM join ThermoEnergy on this important and timely wastewater treatment project for the city of New York," said Dennis C. Cossey, chief executive officer of ThermoEnergy. "Their professional skills and broad range of experience in the municipal wastewater industry will be a valuable contribution to the overall success of the project and further escalate the market awareness for our ARP technology. We plan to use the 26th Ward plant as the model for future municipal and industrial ARP facilities, not only in the U.S. but worldwide."
With the recent site inspection completed, engineers from Earth Tech and Castion Corp., ThermoEnergy's water division, recently submitted the new design for the 26th Ward ARP facility to the city's commissioner for the Bureau of Wastewater Treatment, incorporating the upgrades requested by the city and significantly increasing the size and scope of the project.
Recent test runs on actual New York City ammonia wastewater processed by the company's large-scale pilot plant in Worcester, Mass., were highly successful, producing a discharge stream with an ammonia level significantly better than that required by the city. With the addition of the prefiltering and polishing columns that will be added to the large-scale commercial ARP plant, system performance is expected to increase the margin of compliance even further.Once online, the planned 26th Ward ARP facility will be able to process and treat up to 500,000 gal per day of the plant's ammonia-laden, internal recycle stream called centrate. "At current levels of ammonia concentration, the initial ARP plant at 26th Ward will prevent approximately 600 tons of ammonia from entering Jamaica Bay every year," said Cossey, "converting it instead into a commercial grade fertilizer which can be used as a fertilizer for various applications."
In addition to converting a liability into a useful commodity, the use of ARP instead of conventional biological systems can reduce the amount of energy needed by the host wastewater treatment plant as well as carbon air emissions by thousands of tons a year. "This aspect of the ARP process is particularly attractive to New York City because it perfectly compliments Mayor Bloomberg's unique and highly progressive environmental sustainability program called PlaNYC," Cossey said. "In addition to significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we plan to donate part of the liquid fertilizer produced by the 26th Ward ARP plant to the city for use as a fertilizer for city parks and greenbelts as part of the proposed Keep the Apple Green program."
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