Challenge
The City of Beaumont, CA was dealing with ongoing wastewater treatment issues at their facility due to the failure of previously installed equipment, and as a result, were not able to meet their permit compliance targets.
Plant Managers and city officials reached out to Veolia for a recommendation on how to fix the issues and bring the plant into compliance as quickly as possible.
The plant was designed to process 4 MGD however all four of their existing treatment trains had repeated operational issues.
The customer needed a solution and expansion plan to meet their strict water quality requirements and they wanted equipment supplied by a company they could trust and preferred a vendor who could provide extended service for their operation.
Solution
The City evaluated various options for the plant and Veolia was contracted to install 2 new trains and retrofit the 4 existing trains at the facility.
This solution was the lowest risk option as it provided the most filtration capacity during construction so they could continue meeting their capacity targets during construction.
With the goal of maximizing capacity and reducing risk over the course of the upgrade, the membrane filtration system upgrade was implemented in three phases:
In phase 1, Veolia fully populated the 2 empty membrane tanks with 5 cassettes each. In addition, there was an installation of instrumentation, air and permeate headers, permeate pumps, and controls for the two new trains.
In phase 2, fully populated trains with 5 cassettes each were installed along with the installation of new air and permeate headers and new air ejectors into trains.
In phase 3, Veolia moved 1 fully populated cassette from 4 trains to the last 2 trains and added 2 cassettes to each, along with installing new air and permeate headers and new ejectors.
The official order was given in December 2021 and initial work began in early 2022 with equipment and membranes arriving on site in April.
The project was broken down into three phases of construction each roughly six weeks in duration.
Result
By October 2022 the plant was completely online, and the customer was able to run their downstream processes meeting their permit compliance targets. Additionally, Veolia can expand the operation to 8 MGD by simply adding membranes to the existing trains in the future.
The challenge the customer faced could only be solved by a partner with deep expertise in these solutions coupled with the speed at delivering project management, installation, and testing.