Wastewater Treatment Ponds: Solar-Powered Circulators Provide Barrier to Noxious Odors at Shell Oil Martinez Refinery
Solar-powered circulators provide reliable wastewater odor control to prevent health hazards, public outrage and air quality citations –- along with major savings.
Dickinson, ND (PRWEB via PR Web
Direct) May 17, 2005-- In wastewater treatment, the
prevention of odors escaping from storage ponds is so problematic it is a
disaster-waiting-to-happen. Even an occasional lapse in maintaining an effective
odor cap can have dire consequences including health hazards, public outrage,
and even shutdowns.
Such scenarios are not limited to sludge storage
ponds. Industrial storage basins holding manufacturing effluents, and even
rainwater, contain odor-producing sulfurous compounds that can waft over
communities unless capped effectively.
“We are very concerned about
maintaining an odor cap,” says David Williams, Project Engineer at Shell Oil for
the Martinez, California refinery. “Our wastewater treatment pond is
about 1/4 mile from the residential community. We’ve got a delicate situation
where even just a slight amount of odor could arouse complaints from the
community.”
William’s concern about wastewater odor control led him to
looking for a new aeration technology to replace two brush aerators that had
been attributed to incidents that produced odor complaints from local
residents.
The solution was the SolarBee, a solar-powered water
“circulator” from Pump Systems (www.solarbee.com) that aerates ponds by circulating the top
two feet of water at a rate of up to 10,000 gallons per minute. This circulation
occurs with a gentle, “near laminar” long-distance flow pattern that provides an
oxygenated odor cap across the entire surface 24 hours a day.
This
solution provided impressive cost savings. “Because the wastewater treatment
pond is at a remote location, we had been using rented diesel generators to
power the brush aerators,” Williams explains. The total rental costs for testing
that system was about $15,000 a month. The alternative of powering the site from
the grid would have cost up to $150,000 due to the remote location and
electrical classification. As an added bonus, SolarBees reduce energy costs by
$10,000/year compared to hard-wired aerators.
Williams reports that
since the installation of the circulator systems, the Martinez wastewater treatment pond “has had zero odor complaints due to
inadequate aeration.”
Contact:
Joel Bleth
Pump
Systems
866-437-8076
www.solarbee.com
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/5/prweb241305.htm