Katie McIntyre represented ProChem and our collaborative venture (KLeeNwater) with EES by presenting this week at the MEGA Symposium in Baltimore, Maryland.
MEGA focuses on the power plant industry response to upcoming environmental policy and consequent operational challenges. Acting as the power plant industry’s leading technical conference, MEGA includes policy discussion and sessions on water and air technology to meet the challenges of current requirements and regulations. The 2018 MEGA emphasized approaching up-coming regulations through the use of recent technological practices which meet operational demands while advancing industry toward sustainability.
Partnering with organizations such as Air & Waste Management Association, Institute of Clean Air Companies, EPA, and DOE, sessions were centered around one idea: maintaining the power grid through the lens of regulations. Steven Winberg, Assistant Secretary of Fossil Energy from the DOE, was the opening keynote speaker. Mr. Winberg has 39 years of experience in the energy industry and stated the DOE’s goals under the current administration are two-fold: “Meet (the) continually growing need for secure, reasonably priced…energy supplies through… realizing the promise of clean coal and developing America’s oil and gas reserves…” and “…executing regulatory responsibilities.” The following presentations reflected the question that was suggested by Mr. Winberg’s address: How do we maintain and strengthen our countries power grid while meeting the increase in environmental regulations?
Although many sessions included presentations on the detailed data surrounding the chemicals and practices used in the power industry, such as selenium, mercury, and ash ponds, the transformation of the power industry and technical solutions maintained the focus. The solutions to current regulatory compliance needs were broken up between air and water.
The issues surrounding air balanced between emissions and abatement strategies that followed, while discussions on water encompassed our specialty: reuse. Our presentation at MEGA was a ‘Detailed Overview of the KLeenNwater Pilot System for ELG Compliance.’ The report, written by Katie McIntyre on the pilot system, describes KLeeNwater as a platform with a “novel approach to pretreat and concentrate wastewater streams to meet ELG and ZLD requirements.” This strategy has end result of both cost and water volume reduction with the highest recorded value achieved at 99% recovery. The KLeeNwater approach is able to use the current ProChem pre-treatment options, including sand filtation, physical/chemical treatment, and take further steps in microfiltration and ultrafiltration to greatly reduce contaminates and meet and exceed proposed water regulations. “A brackish RO polishing system can be utilized as the final step of the system, which has proven to have the ability to reduce TDS to below 25 mg/L to meet voluntary BAT. Additionally, KLeeNwater is capable of providing multiple options for concentrate management including fly ash wetting, solidification, and evaporation. The system consists of one 40’ Hi-Cube steel conex container housing a complete fully automated wastewater treatment system.”
The KLeeNwater system presentation highlighted that multiple pilots have been completed—yielding “excellent results to prove that it is an ideal system to meet upcoming ELGs, provide high levels of water reuse and cost-effective solidification-based concentrate management.”
Based on the information given by the paper and presentation, “A Detailed Overview of the KLeeNwater Pilot System for ELG Compliance” – Katie McIntyre
