A wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) expansion featuring an upward sludge blanket filter (USBF) combined with a membrane bioreactor (MBR) has been completed at Snug Cove on Bowen Island in British Columbia, Canada.
The Can$ 2.3 million (US$ 2.18 million) expansion and upgrade of Snug Cove WTTP implementing ECOfluid’s USBF®-MBR configuration provides the municipality with the opportunity to reuse the treated effluent for irrigation at the nearby regional park or for reuse in future dual-plumbing applications.
The membranes are installed within a separate tank receiving effluent pre-filtered by the sludge blanket filter (<10mg/l TSS). ECOfluid says that the configuration (sometimes known as CAS-MF) not only results in safer multi-barrier two-stage filtration but it has many other advantages over conventional immersed MBR systems. Costly ‘fine screening’ is not required, flux rate increases, fouling decreases, and energy input is reduced. Additionally, the biology and the membrane filtration are separated and the processes can be better individually optimized.