Software tools essential to energy savings at wastewater plant

U.S. Department of Energy
Tags: energy management

Energy-efficiency improvements at the Metropolitan Syracuse Wastewater Treatment Plant in New York have reduced its energy costs by more than $200,000 annually.

Photo of the exterior of a wastewater treatment plant showing large circular tanks for water, piping, and other equipment used to treat the water.

For the Metropolitan Syracuse Wastewater Treatment Plant (Metro WWTP) in Onondaga County, N.Y., keeping up with the latest technologies in their wastewater treatment process is key to saving energy and money.
Metro WWTP provides wastewater treatment for 270,000 people and many industrial and commercial customers. A significant amount of energy is consumed while treating an average of 80 million gallons of wastewater daily. In order to improve efficiency at the plant, engineers began upgrading several wastewater treatment processes in 2004.

Utilizing two U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Industrial Technologies Program (ITP) BestPractices tools, MotorMaster+ and the Pumping System Assessment Tool (PSAT), Metro WWTP implemented a system-level project to improve energy efficiency and validate the pump maintenance program.

By retrofitting the motors on waste-activated sludge pumps with variable-frequency drives, installing a biological aeration filtration system instead of aeration blowers, and replacing 25-year-old low-lift impellers, Metro WWTP achieved the following:

A reduction in the number of 100-horsepower blowers from 21 to 13
A lower annual energy consumption of 2.81 million kilowatt-hours, resulting in a cost savings of $207,500
Better control of waste gas, reducing natural gas purchases by 270 MMBtu per year, for a cost savings of $1,500
Total implementation costs of $233,000 for a simple payback of 13 months

The analysis provided by the MotorMaster+ and PSAT tools helped Metro WWTP engineers decide how to optimize the wastewater treatment process — projects and methodologies that can be applied to virtually all wastewater treatment and industrial facilities that require water in their processes.

To learn more, read the full Metro WWTP Performance Spotlight, (PDF 233 KB) as well as others on the ITP Web site. Download Adobe Reader.