In deals totalling more than US$ 20 million, five US municipalities have ordered Evoqua Water Technologies’ BioMag ballasted biological treatment system for their wastewater treatment plants.
According to Evoqua, the municipalities chose the BioMag system “to increase treatment capacity and help them meet stringent nutrient removal limits.”
The system uses fine particles of the iron ore, magnetite, that infiltrate a biological floc to make it more dense and accelerate its precipitation thereby speeding up clarification. Evoqua claims the the system to be “the world’s fastest and most reliable floc settling – allowing capacity expansion and performance improvement with minimal plant modifications at the lowest cost possible.”
The five BioMag installations were contracts were in wastewater treatment plants at Front Royal, Virginia; East Norriton, Pennsylvania; Cascade and Tanneytown, Maryland; and Berkeley, West Virginia.
The upgrade and 45% capacity expansion of the Front Royal wastewater treatment facility included two other Evoqua products as well as BioMag. They were the Jet Tech’s Vari-cant jet aeration system, and Envirex primary and secondary clarifiers. The upgrade will enable the plant to meet enhanced nutrient removal limits for nitrogen and phosphorus without the need for tertiary treatment, Evoqua said.
At East Norriton’s wastewater treatment facility outside Philadelphia a new BioMag system was also accompanied by Vari-cant. The project will increase the capacity of the existing bioreactors and secondary clarifiers by nearly 70% acceding to Evoqua. The company said also it will enable the facility to meet future nitrogen limits cost-effectively with existing tankage.
The Winebrenner Wastewater Treatment Plant in Cascade was the second facility in Washington County to be upgraded with the BioMag system to meet the new state nutrient removal standards. The county’s Smithsburg Wastewater Treatment Plant, was the first to use BioMag.
Taneytown is upgrading its wastewater treatment facility with the BioMag system to meet the state’s new nutrient removal standards while using existing tankage.
Four West Virginia sequencing batch reactor facilities in the Berkeley County Public Service Sewer District are being upgraded with BioMag. The projects are part of a plan to meet limits for nitrogen and phosphorous in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed area without tertiary filtration.