This past week Wastewater 101 and a small group from Rensselaer, Indiana spent a few hours at the Knightstown Wastewater Treatment Plant operated by Rick. The main focus of this visit was to observe the operation of Blue River Technology’s Dewatering Tower. Of course it is always helpful to tour the entire facility to see what the other processes are that make up the sludge being dewatered. Knightstown operates a conventional activated sludge facility with a daily flow of approximately 460,000 gallons per day utilizing a Rotamat style grit/bar screen, 6 aeration basins, 2 rim feed clarifiers, two aerobic digesters, ultra violet disinfection and the Dewatering Tower for final solids removal. The facility has existing drying beds that have plastic media instead of sand, however, the drainage system has never worked properly thus rendering them useless. Mike Conwell, Owner of Blue Ridge Technologies and two of his employees were on hand to show us the operation of the Dewatering Tower from emptying it out to filling it back up and answered all of our questions regarding the equipment, polymer and structure surrounding it, while
the Plant Superintendent answered our questions regarding solids concentrations, plant information and various other questions we had. For ease of operation and quick turnaround time this could be exactly what a smaller plant that has fluctuating flow (such as a resort area or a town that has various large well attended festivals, etc.) could utilize as well as a larger facility that doesn’t have the manpower needed to run more hands-on processes. The ONLY downside I see is the solids are not as “dry” as other dewatering methods out there, but I can see where the ease of operation might outweigh that problem. Another consideration is that the bags can be reused 3 to 5 times before they need replaced (depending on polymer use, feed solids type and concentration). If you are interested in finding out more about the Dewatering Tower we were looking at check out this link (see the video at the bottom of the Home Page): http://blueriverdewater.com/default.htm
