Conference Papers | 2009 Conference Papers

EVALUATION OF SOUTH EAST QUEENSLAND WASTEWATER PLANTS’ INLET SCREENS PERFORMANCE

Mark Wilson, Process Engineer, Gold Coast Water.
Michael Thomas, Process Engineer, Sunshine Coast Water.

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ABSTRACT

The removal of screenings in a wastewater treatment plant pre-treatment facility is crucial to protect and prolong the life of downstream equipment - a pre-requisite for reliable plant performance. Unfortunately reliable, unbiased full-scale operations performance data for such vital equipment is scarce. There are a number of limitations preventing the accurate calculation of screenings capture rates, primarily the inability to quantify the total flux of screenings into a wastewater treatment plant with the raw sewage. In a cooperative effort between SEQ local governments, these limitations have been managed by averaging the performance of each generic type of screen across a range of catchments, resulting in the compilation of meaningful screening removal performance data. Analysis of the data collected from 31 wastewater treatment plants found no evidence of a clearly superior screen type, although band screens, spiral sieves and step screens all performed well. Neither average dry weather flow nor screen aperture size alone were found to correlate with screen performance.

KEYWORDS

Pre-treatment; screening; screenings capture rate; wastewater.