The Alabama City of Prattville Spared No Effort in a Treatment Facility and Biosolids Program Upgrade

An Alabama team pulled out all the stops with a complete upgrade of a clean-water facility that includes a lime stabilization process yielding Class A biosolids.

Jan 16, 2020 | by Larry Trojak |

Alabama Upgrade Lime Stabilization Class A Biosolids Green Infrastructure Land Application Duperon Corporation Fine Screen Hydro International Grit Removal System WEMCO Pumps Grit Classifier Evoqua Water Technologies (part of Xylem) Activated Sludge Process Howden Positive Displacement Blower Schwing Bioset, Inc. Screw Press Pumps

The Alabama City of Prattville Spared No Effort in a Treatment Facility and Biosolids Program Upgrade — Included in the Pine Creek plant overhaul was a new headworks. Here, after fine screens (Duperon) remove trash and debris, a grit system (Hydro International) removes 95% of grit particles 75 microns and larger.

The Alabama City of Prattville Spared No Effort in a Treatment Facility and Biosolids Program Upgrade — Key Pine Creek facility personnel include, from left, Sam Russell, former plant manager; Napoleon Wilks, current plant manager; Greg Thompson, project engineer with Engineers of the South; and Ryan Bock, on-site Engineer with Engineers of the South.

The Alabama City of Prattville Spared No Effort in a Treatment Facility and Biosolids Program Upgrade — A screw conveyor takes untreated biosolids from the screw presses to a twin-screw mixer, where quicklime and sulfamic acid are added and mixed before being pumped to the reactor.

The Alabama City of Prattville Spared No Effort in a Treatment Facility and Biosolids Program Upgrade — Napoleon Wilks periodically monitors the overall process in the biosolids control room. Changes can be easily made from there when needed.

The Alabama City of Prattville Spared No Effort in a Treatment Facility and Biosolids Program Upgrade — Pine Creek and Prattville’s Public Works Department see the new Learning Center playing a dual role: as a site for continuing education for water and wastewater operators, and as a vehicle for promoting water treatment as a viable career.

The Alabama City of Prattville Spared No Effort in a Treatment Facility and Biosolids Program Upgrade — Each screw press is rated for 1,122 pounds of dry solids per hour, with a minimum 17% cake solids and a 95% minimum system solids capture. The presses continue to dewater during cleaning cycles so that no equalization storage is needed between dewatering and the Class A operations.

The Alabama City of Prattville Spared No Effort in a Treatment Facility and Biosolids Program Upgrade — In a 22-foot-long reactor in the Schwing Bioset process, chemical reactions raise the biosolids temperature and pH level, creating a Class A product.

When the City of Prattville, Alabama, decided to upgrade its Pine Creek Clean Water Facility, it spared no effort. While the city had made incremental modifications in the past, the latest upgrade, completed in 2019, was designed to take the facility from simply adequate to boldly forward-thinking, fulfilling the city’s needs for at least the next quarter century. A key to the new facility plan was a rethinking of solids handling, which had been basic and costly. Today, the Pine Creek facility uses a new approach to aeration, dewaters biosolids on a pair of screw presses and generates Class A biosolids

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