Illinois Wastewater Facility Receives Recognition for Operational Excellence

Highland, Illinois, water recovery facility recognized for exemplary system management

HIGHLAND, ILLINOIS, UNITED STATES, March 22, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ -- EnviroMix, Inc. recently presented its Operational Excellence Award to the water recovery facility (WRF) staff for the City of Highland, Illinois. The award recognizes operations staff who demonstrate a high level of commitment to outstanding plant performance and the success of their EnviroMix solution. The Highland WRF was recognized for their excellence after a 2020 upgrade led to improved energy efficiency and reduced operation and maintenance demands.

Located 35 miles east of St. Louis, Highland is home to a population of about 10,000 residents. The scope of the upgrade consisted of new headworks, secondary clarification, aerobic digestion, sludge holding, and sludge dewatering. Prior to 2020, the aerobic digester was aerated and mixed via inefficient coarse bubble diffused aeration with air lift pumps that transferred sludge between cells; the digested sludge holding tank was mixed with an inefficient pump mix system. EnviroMix’s energy-efficient BioCycle-D Optimized Aerobic Digestion Process was selected to replace the inefficient, conventional solutions in both applications.

Highland’s former supervisor Bill Zimmer commented, “Our old digester was labor intensive… we had to check it constantly, and we were wasting a lot of energy. [Since the upgrade], even though we’ve added three blowers and two compressors and doubled our capacity, in reality, we’re using less energy than we were.”

BioCycle-D is designed by right-sizing the diffused aeration system to satisfy process oxygen demand and applying energy efficient mixing through a BioMix™ Compressed Gas Mixing System. The process decouples aeration from mixing, facilitating independent control over oxygen delivery and mixing, thus preventing over-aeration and wasted energy.

When asked what he likes most about the BioCycle-D technology, Zimmer replied, “What I like most about BioCycle-D is the functionality — the automatic operation of the decanting. Everything just flows and it’s not so labor intensive.”

Decoupling aeration from mixing provides the Highland WRF with more than 75% energy savings at design loading and even greater savings at the reduced current sludge loading, resulting in annual operational savings of more than $200,000.

Jeanna Walls
EnviroMix
8649051813 ext.
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