Increased water REUSE plant output due to operational excellence

A good example is the advanced water reuse plant of a leading European meat processor. They started 11 year ago with one slaughter line and gradually expanded with 2 slaughter lines and a rendering facility. The wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) was gradually expanded to 10.500 m3/d capacity treating to facilitate the increased wastewater towards river water discharge quality. The process water production however, based on groundwater extraction and treatment, was not able to meet the growing demand. Increasing draught periods were stressing the quality and quantity of their boreholes resulting in forced reducing in slaughterhouse capacity. To anticipate on this thread, they implemented a Sewage Treatment Effluent Reuse Facility of 4.000 m3/d producing certified drinking water quality for process applications which went into operation in 2019.

Since the start of reuse operation in 2019 the plant output have been increase gradually over the two years (see table below). Key success for this increase can be categorized in increased application knowledge of the integrated WWTP-REUSE system and changed operational and maintenance mindset.

In the period before start of the reuse facility, the WWTP operational approach was focused optimizing performance and OPEX while maintaining river discharge quality. Operators had developed their plant application knowledge, perfectly been able to anticipate on incidents, offsets and season.

After starting up the reuse plant, it however turned out that some of these traditional reactions did had a counter effect on the reuse performance and capacity. Some correlations could quite quickly been identified where others influencing parameters did require serious investigation upstream into the WWTP to understand and anticipate.

Since the hydraulic capacity of the reuse facility is directly linked to the availability of both the quality and the quantity of WWTP effluent, maintenance to the existing WWTP became more important. This has shown accountability to the speed of response on reactive maintenance as well as timing of scheduled maintenance.

To follow the rhythm of the slaughterhouse operation (5 to 6 days slaughtering and 1 to 2 days weekend) scheduled maintenance for the reuse facility had to be moved to the weekend days to maximise water reclamation when water was needed. This was requiring a more long term planning of cleanings and maintenance to increase uptime during the slaughterhouse production.

With an operation, support and monitoring contract in place, local water reuse experts are working in close cooperation on daily basis supporting local client operations team with data monitoring, trouble shooting and plant optimization. This ongoing growth in application knowledge is maximising the plant output capacities, both to water reclamation and river discharge, while operational expenses are continuously optimized.

Source: Wolbrink, T. 2021. Increased water REUSE plant output due to operational excellence. Wastewater, energy production and emissions, Clean Water & Ecosystem Restoration. AIWW 2021