IMS Annual Conference 2019

Carollo's Blue Plan-it® tool helps utilities manage complex, interconnected water and wastewater infrastructure by evaluating and optimizing complex planning alternatives, confirming design concepts based on operational simulations, training operators, and optimizing operating facilities.

We used Blue Plan-it® to assist with Houston's Northeast Water Purification Plant (NEWPP) Expansion Project. This $1.75B project expands the existing 80-mgd NEWPP to 400 mgd using conventional treatment, intermediate ozone, biological filtration, and mechanical dewatering. The raw water source is challenging: major storm events produce rapidly changing conditions that can drop alkalinity to 10 mg/L, raise turbidity to 250 NTU, raise TOC to 20 mg/L, and require alum doses up to 220 mg/L. These challenges demand high reliability and operational flexibility, which also increases complexity.

This presentation will highlight how we used a Blue Plan-it® operational model to simplify the complexity for design confirmation and operator training by:
1. Demonstrating how plant operations respond to rapidly changing raw water quality, including impact of chemical dosing, finished water stability, and O&M cost
2. Highlighting the operational impacts (truck traffic) of high turbidity events and resulting high solids loading (700,000 lb/day)
3. Clarifying operational strategies to take advantage of built-in redundancy when different trains are out of service.