Challenge
- Application: Municipal drinking water
- Location: Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
- Product: ZeeWeed 1500 RMS Plant
- Capacity: 8 MGD
- Commissioned: April 2014
Knox Chapman Utility District (KCUD) is located adjacent to the City of Knoxville, TN, and covers an area of approximately 60 square miles. KCUD’s mission is to provide the highest quality of water and wastewater related services to customers at a reasonable price.
With the help of Veolia’s pressurized ZeeWeed 1500 (ZW1500) modules, KCUD produces clean drinking water for the city of Knoxville and surrounding areas. Raw feed water is sourced from the French Broad River and pretreated at KCUD using prescreening, coagulation and flocculation. Table 1 details key plant parameters along with the raw water quality.
As an existing ZW1500 customer with extra plant space, KCUD had plans to increase their plant capacity. Figure 2 shows the ZW1500 layout inside the drinking water facility.
Solution
Working closely with Veolia, KCUD approved a preproduction trial for the newly designed ZW1500 RMS product line (Rackless Module System). This provided KCUD extra capacity while granting Veolia an opportunity to showcase the new RMS line.
The design of the RMS product minimizes plant footprint by optimizing the amount of piping required. Consisting of all molded plastic parts, the ZW1500 RMS is designed for lower cost, smaller footprint, simplicity and modularity.
To test the performance of the ZW1500 RMS, KCUD installed one train of the ZW1500 RMS line, consisting of 112 modules total (4x28 configuration) (Figure 3).
The components of the train were shipped partially assembled in crates for quick and easy plant installation. Figure 4 illustrates how the RMS components were shipped.
Result
The ZW1500 RMS system became operational in March, 2016. The testing of the system has continued to provide treated water with the same high quality as the original system. Table 2 references the permeate water quality of KCUD.
In addition to delivering high quality permeate, the RMS design has proven to be:
- 75% less costly than a typical rack.
- Up to 50% smaller than a typical rack footprint.
- Easy to assemble and install.
- Versatile in terms of train layout within the plant.
Figure 5 demonstrates the sizing comparison between a typical ZW1500 rack and the newly designed RMS train
With help from KCUD, this testing has provided Veolia the opportunity to get valuable feedback on a full-scale installation before delivering the RMS product line to commercial projects in 2016.