How many of us, I wonder, stop to think about the process involved in receiving water once we turn on the faucet or consider what happens when we flush the toilet. No doubt we look at our utility bill and ponder the fees and services shown therein.
Fortunately there is trend emerging among treatment plants as these facilities look for and implement efficient and energy saving processes, as evidenced in the
Florida Water Resources Journal article, Coming Full Circle: Moving Wastewater Treatment Plants Toward Energy Neutrality
by Matthew P. Van Horne, Joe Rohrbacher, and Paul Pitt
Here is portion of the article:
Water and wastewater conveyance and treatment account for approximately 3 percent of energy consumption in the U.S. and may represent a third of a municipality’s total energy costs (USEPA). On a national scale, wastewater treatment consumes approximately 21 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) each year, which corresponds to the equivalent of 1.8 million typical households.
Escalation of energy costs is expected, and recent emphasis on sustainability has also led many utilities to consider improvements to optimize energy usage, both for financial and environmental
reasons. Coupling these drivers with the fact that raw wastewater can contain up to ten times the energy required to treat it (through a combination of chemical, thermal, and hydraulic energy), opportunities exist within the wastewater treatment sector to move the treatment process closer to an energy neutral state. An energy neutral facility can be generally defined as a facility that produces at least as much energy as it consumes, and over some period of time, has zero net energy inputs from external sources.
UF TREEO offers related courses for Operators:
