WesTech Engineering, Inc. of Salt Lake City, Utah, has helped to increase the treatment capacity at the Miami Dade South District Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) by 60 million gallons per day (MGD). WesTech has supplied four new 195' diameter clarifiers and retrofitted six additional 195' diameter clarifiers with the proprietary Clarifier Optimization Package (COP™) design. All ten clarifiers are now installed and online. The final two units were commissioned on December 7, 2011.
Located in Miami, Florida, the South District WWTP had a peak flow capacity of 225 MGD. The new clarifiers are a key part of an expansion that will increase the plant capacity to a peak flow of 285 MGD to meet increased demand caused by regulatory requirements and population growth.
More stringent regulations have resulted in a mandate that the effluent from wastewater treatment plants in the area be upgraded to protect existing aquifers. The COP Clarifier design offers capacity and efficiency improvements over conventional clarifiers.
“We have found that the COP Clarifiers perform better than our old standard rake/no EDI style of clarifiers,” said Steve Kronheim, Chief Plant Operator at Miami Dade. “Also, we are excited to see how the new Dual-Gate EDI will perform at peak conditions as compared to the conventional scooped EDI.
“The incorporation of the spiral bladed collection mechanism appears to provide a thicker underflow than delivered by our previous clarifiers. In the past, our RAS concentration was between 7,000 – 9,000 mg/L and now it is between 9,000 – 11,000 mg/L. This saves us 20 to 30 percent on our RAS pumping and increases the capacity of our solids processing facility.”
The COP Clarifier is the integration and coordination of several internal clarifier components for increased efficiency of primary and secondary clarification. The incorporation of the WesTech COP Clarifier has helped make the Miami Dade South District WWTP one of the largest plants in the Southeast.
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