WEF/WERF Making It Go Away: An Overview of Waste Sludge Reduction Technologies

Sunday, October 19, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm
1 day, 0.6 CEUs

The increasing costs and difficulties of residuals disposal are driving many utilities and industries to consider alternate methods of handling the residuals produced during the wastewater treatment process. This is being driven by a number of factors including: public perceptions of the biosolids produced by wastewater treatment facilities reducing disposal options. Kern County, CA is an example where biosolids application has been severely limited by the public; utilities needing to reduce the cost and complication of biosolids disposal; and utilities desiring to simplify the operation of their facilities

In parallel with this, the market has seen the development of a number of different treatment options that reduce the amount of biosolids produced at these facilities. These technologies have taken a variety of approaches, and combination of approaches. In general these technologies can be categorized as Biological, Chemical, or Mechanical. A further categorization of these technologies relates to where they are applied, within either the secondary treatment system or as a pretreatment step prior to digestion.
The high level of interest in these technologies by both utilities and vendors has resulted in a large amount of information that is difficult to understand and sort out. The resulting confusion makes decision making very difficult for utilities and engineers evaluating these technologies.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together, industries, utilities, vendors, consultants, and academics in one location to assess the status of these technologies in an unbiased manner. The workshop will be organized to have speakers from academia, WERF, vendors, and operators of these technologies.. A large amount of discussion time is scheduled after each speaker or groups of speakers to encourage audience participation. The vendor discussions have been chosen to illustrate biological, chemical, and mechanical means, as well as secondary methods vs. digestion pretreatment methods. The workshop will conclude with a panel discussion to summarize the findings.

Chair
John Novak, Virginia Tech

Co-Chair
Bruce Johnson, CH2M HILL

Speakers
Julian Sandino, CH2M HILL
Marc Roehl, Siemens Water Technologies, Corp.
Tom Glendenning, City of Byron, Illinois
John D. Dyson, Infilco Degremont, Inc.
Steve Bungay, Black & Veatch
Leo Barnes, Anglian Water