Two Donohue personnel are featured speakers at the Wisconsin Wastewater Operators’ Association (WWOA) Annual Conference being held virtually October 20-22, 2020.
Eric Lynne: Biosolids Drying to Eliminate Liquid Land Application
Eric will discuss the City of Stevens Point’s efforts to replace their liquid land application process with a Class A EQ dried material. Following the decision to eliminate liquid land application, the City and Donohue evaluated several types of drying systems. The selected process uses indirect heat with rotary paddles to create a uniform end product. This product is the first in the country to be used to dry municipal biosolids. The dryer’s energy-saving heating system is dual fuel, allowing for reliable treatment with biogas generated from the digestion process or natural gas.
The two previously used liquid sludge storage tanks were converted to provide filtrate equalization and anaerobic digestion. The conversion provides a 200% boost in anaerobic digestion capacity. This additional capacity allows the old digester system to be taken off-line for maintenance activities and provides increased capacity for new high strength waste sources.
Eric Lynne is a process engineer and Minnesota area manager in Donohue’s Minneapolis office. He received both a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering from South Dakota State University.
Bill Marten: A Roller Coaster Tour of Nitrification in Operation
Nitrification is an advanced nutrient removal process that has been around a long time in wastewater treatment and is well understood and easily designed and operated to achieve desired levels of ammonia removal, right? Well…that’s the common belief and a belief Bill held for many years until several recent experiences at operating plants have shown him, “You really don’t know all you think you do.” This presentation will review the common understandings of nitrification in activated sludge. It will then discuss several recent case histories where nitrification operations showed unexpected results, and how plant staff responded to overcome and/or optimize their nitrifying activated sludge performance.
Bill began his career in wastewater over 40 years ago as an operator at Madison’s Nine Springs WWTP, during which he earned his undergraduate engineering degree from UW-Madison. He then performed research in the emerging fields of biological nutrient removal (BNR) and selectors at Nine Springs while earning his master’s degree in environmental engineering. Since then, Bill has worked for a large wastewater utility in California, managed a 15-million-gallon-per-day plant in Maine, and has worked in consulting engineering for national and regional firms. He’s been with Donohue approximately 20 years as a senior wastewater process and operations specialist/engineer.
For more information on the conference, please visit https://pheedloop.com/wwoa2020/site/.