USFilter's Kruger Products will provide Denver Water's wastewater treatment plant with a Biostyr® biological aerated filtration system to treat effluent for use as power generation facility cooling tower make-up water and other area water reuse applications.
Denver is the first city in the Western U.S. to install a Biostyr system and the first in the nation to use it for water reuse purposes.
The Biostyr system is an innovative biological treatment method consisting of upflow filtration through submerged and floating fine granular media called Biostyrene. This small footprint system efficiently and cost effectively removes all biodegradable pollutants, such as chemical oxygen demand, biological oxygen demand, suspended solids, ammonia and nitrates.
Representatives from Denver Water and the consulting engineering firm of CH2M HILL (Englewood, Colo.) visited existing Biostyr facilities to gain a better understanding of the process.
"The engineer and owner both visited a Biostyr installation in Illinois … They met with our Biostyr experts numerous times to ensure that such a system could be designed around the technology," recalled Rob Szekeress, USFilter's Biostyr product manager.
The selected system had to handle wide variations in the influent wastewater ammonia level and to remove ammonia to less than 2 mg/L so that the effluent could be used as cooling tower make-up water. USFilter was able to demonstrate that the Biostyr system would in fact do this – cost effectively and with a small footprint system.
"USFilter worked closely with us to produce a design that would most effectively meet our treatment requirements," said CH2M HILL's Larry Schimmoller. "In addition, USFilter provided a very tight process performance guarantee to assure us that the system would perform to necessary levels."
As part of the $2.4 million contract, USFilter will supply the Biostyr system, controls, media installation and process start-up. The 30-million-gallon-per-day peak flow plant is scheduled to go online in July 2004.
The contractor is a joint venture between Lillard & Clark and Western Summit Constructors, Inc., both of Denver.
Source: USFilter
