High Quality Recycled Influent Extends Process Equipment Life

The Customer
An engineered wood products manufacturing plant whose manufacturing processes introduce high TSS and organics (tannins and lignins) into their wastewater.

The Problem
15K gallons of wastewater per day was being treated and recycled back into the manufacturing process. The customer was facing costly downtime and parts replacement due to the poor quality of the recycled water:

• The media in their Regenerative Thermal Oxidizing (RTO) units required replacing every two years, which is approximately a $1 million investment per replacement.
• Once per month, production in the plant had to be shut down to clean their process equipment, consuming approximately 60 – 80 man hours to complete.

Additionally, the customer was experiencing environmental compliance violations for onsite wastewater storage.

The ProChem Solution
After completing the water analysis and assessing the facility's reuse potential and production goals, ProChem, Inc. offered an improved water reuse system. The water reuse system included a new physical/chemical treatment program, CleanWESP™, and filtration media. This system operates 40 hours per week. ProChem provides daily O&M services. This water reuse system is equipped with local monitoring, automation controls, and ProChem’s web-based remote monitoring service.

A ProChem employee operates this system on-site daily. These responsibilities include testing equipment, calibrating instruments, and testing for water quality to ensure the system is meeting project goals.

With this water reuse system and operational services in place, the customer is experiencing a 100% wastewater reuse rate and a significant reduction to costly downtime and parts replacement, due to the higher quality of influent:

• The media in their RTO units was installed in 2009 and has not required replacement since (and shows no signs of wear). This is a cost savings of approximately $500,000 per year on this task alone.
• The monthly process equipment cleaning process now requires less than 8 man hours to complete (compared to the previous 60 - 80 hours).