A manufacturer for mining and utilities operations in the Midwest whose plant processes required approximately 40,000 gallons of fresh water per day and introduced heavy metals and oils into their wastewater.

The 40,000 gallons of wastewater per day was being discharged from their existing wastewater treatment system, but the facility was experiencing discharge compliance violations for metals and faced water restrictions under a drought emergency forming in their city. While the facility was under a corporate mandate to reuse water, city-wide water conservation efforts were being put into place that impacted the facility: restricted water supply and a city-wide water reuse project, where all city-supplied water is recycled back into its potable supply. Wastewater effluent that is used as recycled influent is exempt from drought restrictions, so reusing their wastewater was the only option for maintaining production capacity. In addition, the facility wanted to reuse their sanitary water as an added stream to their manufacturing process.

After completing the water analysis, assessing the facility's reuse potential and production goals, ProChem offered a Design, Build, Operate solution that included a new wastewater treatment system and a water reuse system.

The wastewater treatment system is a 90 gpm continuous flow system, utilizing physical/chemical and ion-exchange technology. This system operates 10 hours per day, seven days per week. The treated wastewater is fed to the water reuse system. The water reuse system uses industrial high pressure reverse osmosis (I-PROTM) technology to purify the wastewater and feed it into the manufacturing process. It can accept wastewater at 75 gpm and feed purified water at 120 gpm. It treats wastewater from two sources:

• The wastewater treatment system.
• The customer's naturally engineered wastewater treatment system (NEWT), which collects the facility's sanitary water and purifies it using vegetation.

This system includes a clean-in-place (CIP) system to clean the I-PROTM membranes on site and directs its wastewater to the wastewater treatment system for treatment (and then recycling). Ultraviolet light (for microbiological control) and deionization columns (for high purity) follow the I-PROTM unit to further purify the recycled water before use in the manufacturing plant, resulting in a water quality that is higher than that of the city water.  The plant can accept water after UV treatment or after UV treatment plus deionization, depending on the point of use.

The wastewater treatment system and water reuse system are equipped with local monitoring and automation controls and ProChem's web-based remote monitoring service, requiring minimal operator interaction.

ProChem employees operate the wastewater treatment system and water reuse system on-site daily. These responsibilities include testing equipment, calibrating instruments, and testing for water quality to ensure the system is meeting project goals.

With this Design, Build, Operate solution in place, the facility is experiencing 100% discharge permit compliance and a 95% reuse rate. The facility has also reduced their water consumption overall by 68%.