Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - September 2004
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Mobile water treatment facility use rises
Municipal drinking water
facilities, power plants,
refineries, chemical plants
and various other industries
all need an uninterrupted supply
of high-quality water. Sometimes factors
such as a drought, contaminated
water, a change in process water quality
requirements or the shutdown of a
water treatment system for maintenance,
affect a plant’s ability to meet
its purified water needs. When that
happens, the plant needs an alternative
water supply - fast.
Mobile water treatment offers a
quick, cost-effective solution. A phone
call to a mobile water treatment
provider sets the wheels in motion, and
a trailer containing water treatment
equipment soon arrives at the customer’s
site. It’s not only emergency
situations that call for mobile water
treatment, however. Mobile trailers
provide purified water for pilot facilities,
interim use until a permanent system
is installed, system scale-up, zero
discharge applications and scheduled
maintenance of permanent systems.
With water shortages, more stringent
environmental regulations and the
cost of capital equipment on the rise,
more businesses are choosing mobile
water treatment for emergency, seasonal
and short-term water treatment
needs.
“We’ve seen a significant increase
in the number of requests for emergency
mobile treatment and temporary
mobile treatment contracts over the
past few years,” says Pete Sesing,
USFilter’s vice president for mobile
and onsite services.
A recent treatment project involved
the Cucamonga Valley Water District
in Rancho Cucamonga, California.
USFilter provided emergency trailers
for nitrate removal from a dormant
well that needed to be brought back on
line during a water shortage. In late
May 2004, the water district learned
that its normal supply of water would
be interrupted in a week because of
emergency supply line work. This
shutdown would have caused a 60-percent
reduction in the water supply to
43,000 connections. USFilter sent
multiple mobile units to the well site in
Rancho Cucamonga. Each unit
processed 400 gallons per minute of
influent well water, removing the
nitrate with an NSF-certified resin.
The mobile services allowed an uninterrupted
supply of treated water for
the district, with no waste discharge at
the site. Besides bringing the well on
line, the mobile treatment provided an
additional 10 million gallons of water
during the emergency water shortage.
In the industrial sector, USFilter has
provided mobile water treatment to
power plants requiring extra water
capacity. In June 2004, two emergency
mobile trailers were supplied to PSEG
Power’s Mercer Generating Station in
Trenton, New Jersey, preventing a
plant shutdown. A sudden increase in
water demand, combined with the discovery
of colloidal silica in the city
water, meant that the plant needed
mobile trailers with carbon pre-treatment,
reverse osmosis and demineralization.
“We were literally minutes away
from being shut down because of the
demineralized water demand,” says
Mark Schwartzkopf, senior environmental
engineer, Mercer Generating
Station.
Contact: www.usfilter.com
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