Built in the 1950s, the Clavey Road Water Reclamation Facility in Highland Park, Illinois, was using its primary clarifiers as grit removal. This was leading to numerous undesirable maintenance issues that the 28 mgd (peak) facility wanted to eliminate. The clarifiers would need to be taken down frequently to manually clean out the grit that was continuously reducing the clarifier’s capacity. 

Grit would also pass through to aeration basins where it would cover the diffusers and increase the energy required to run the blowers until these too would need be taken offline and cleaned out. Grit-laden sludge taken from the primaries would be sent to digestion where the grit would remain until it too would need to be manually cleaned out. 

Surrounded by golf courses and located in a prestigious residential neighborhood, odor control was a big concern. Most of these cleaning processes required draining formerly submerged tanks, which introduced additional odor issues. The plant was looking for a better solution that was not such a maintenance nightmare. 

In 1998, the Clavey Road Facility and its neighbor plant just 17 miles to the north in Gurnee, Illinois, installed matching SlurryCup/Grit Snail sludge degritting solutions from Hydro International. These systems have dramatically reduced maintenance and protected process capacity for both plants for over 22 years. 

Download this case study to learn more about how these two plants solved some of their most significant maintenance challenges with high-performance sludge degritting.