Wessex Water Uses Siltbuster MBBR Technology During Bio-filter Refurbishment
Siltbuster Process Solutions has partnered with Wessex Water to provide temporary treatment capacity during refurbishment work at its Wellington wastewater treatment plant in Somerset, from June – August 2018.
The plant’s bio-filter beds needed to be taken off-line one at a time for crucial refurbishment, but this would have left insufficient biological capacity to treat the flows and loads. To ensure this wasn’t the case, SPS installed three temporary Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor (MBBR) treatment units through which a proportion of the partially treated bio-filter effluent was passed. Following biological treatment in the MBBR 30s, the flow gravitated to existing humus tanks for secondary settlement before discharge.
Operating in parallel, and with each unit having a dedicated skid mounted duty/standby blower arrangement, the three SPS’s units were able to treat a combined maximum flow rate of 90m3 per hour, removing predominantly ammonia and a small amount of residual BOD.
Clwyd Jones, Business Development Manager at SPS, commented: “While MBBR technology is not new, having been used successfully in Scandinavia since the late ‘80s, it has yet to become established in the UK, so it is great to have an opportunity to showcase its benefits.”
“MBBRs offer greater treatment capacity per unit volume in comparison to SAF systems and the units are compact with a smaller footprint. The size of the units was critical for this project as access to the site was through an industrial estate with narrow roads and some 90-degree bends to negotiate. Having been transported to the site, they then had to be offloaded in a confined area. Thanks to their high treatment capabilities and compact footprint size, the MBBRs were perfectly suited to this job.”
Jill Smith, Technical Manager at Wessex Water, said: “The MBBRs provided us with an effective solution that ensures we remain compliant with our Environment Agency limits during the necessary refurbishment work. Following completion of the work at Wellington, we will use the units at other sites where temporary treatment is needed during major engineering projects.”
