Containerized plant resolves district’s drought difficulties

Membrane filtration company, H2O Innovation, has delivered a 3,200 m³/d containerized water treatment system to the Cambria Community Service District, California to “resolve promptly” the community’s difficulties amid its tenth year of drought. The system treats a mix of brackish water, freshwater and secondary effluent to be injected into a groundwater basin.

H2O Innovation, in collaboration with engineering consultancy, CDM Smith, designed, manufactured and commissioned the containerized reverse osmosis (RO) water treatment system for Cambria.

“Cambria is very satisfied with the system provided by H2O Innovation and the overall execution supervised by CDM Smith. We had a pressing need for a new water source and our problem was resolved promptly with this containerized water treatment system”, said Cambria’s general manager, Jerry Gruber.

The system comprises a pre-filtration strainer followed by a ultrafiltration system that feeds two RO trains. A third RO train processes the concentrate of the first two RO trains to achieve an overall recovery of 92%. The chemical dosing systems and the SCADA room are mounted in independent containers to give the operator a comfortable environment said H2O Innovation.

Once treated, the water is injected into a San Simeon Well Field groundwater basin to replenish the San Rosa Creek and San Simeon Creek aquifers that are freshwater sources for Cambria.
 
The Cambria project has been nominated at the Global Water Summit for desalination project of the year. Winner will be announced at the Summit in Athens in April.