Energy is the single highest operating cost in a wastewater treatment plant, with energy to operate blowers for aeration being the single highest energy consumer. With rising energy costs, it is vital to examine the system’s efficiency and understand how each piece of equipment works with one another and how this interaction impacts plant energy efficiency.
This whitepaper outlines the traditional approach to wastewater treatment plant design and the efficiency problems associated with it, and explain system splitting, an alternate design approach with key efficiency gains. The whitepaper also discusses how to calculate an individual unit’s and entire system’s specific power and provide calculation examples for comparing system-specific power between traditional and system-splitting design approaches.