Traverse City: the Largest Operating MBR Facility in North America

The Traverse City (Michigan) Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant has been successfully converted from a conventional plant into a membrane bioreactor-based facility, and commissioning has commenced. At current flows, and at design flows, the plant is the largest Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) facility in North America. In addition to being notable because of the size of the plant (32,000 m3/day, 8.5 mgd, during the maximum month), the facility is significant because of the design innovations incorporated into this major upgrade project. Some of the design features of interest include the avoidance of flow equalization, fine screening of primary effluent, the application of a biological nutrient removal process in an MBR design, the use of automated in situ membrane cleaning, and the structure of the membrane equipment contract. These features, and the process and equipment tests conducted during the commissioning phase, are described.