Procurement of MBR Facilities at Irvine Ranch Water District Michelson Recycling Plant to Provide High Quality Reclaimed Water

Irvine Ranch Water District (IRWD) serves the City of Irvine and portions of surrounding cities. The District provides potable water to a population of 316,000. Approximately 35 percent of IRWD's drinking water is purchased from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). Imported water comes from the Colorado River and from Northern California. The remaining 65 percent of the water supply comes from IRWD's extensive well system.IRWD's water reclamation plants treat wastewater to tertiary or advanced levels of treatment. The majority of recycled water is used for landscape irrigation in parks, golf courses, school grounds, city street medians, homeowner associations and other public areas. Recycled water is also used for toilet flushing in 15 office buildings, for cooling towers and for industrial uses such as carpet dyeing. IRWD maintains a completely separate recycled pipeline system of over 300 miles serving over 3,500 customers. The Michelson Water Reclamation Plant (MWRP) in Irvine treats up to 18 million gallons of wastewater per day.IRWD is embarking on a program to reduce dependence on imported water. A key element in this program is expanding the recycling facilities. This paper focuses on a planned expansion at the MWRP. This expansion will utilize a membrane bioreactor facility to provide high quality reclaimed water. The expansion will occur in two Phases: MWRP Phase 2 and Phase 3 Expansions.The intent of phase 2 Expansion is to provide a system capable of operating with an AADF of 10.9 MGD and Peak flow of 11.5 MGD. The following Table 1 is the projected influent water quality that has been used in the development of the project biological processes.The treatment facility will meet the effluent requirements of California Title 22, and the following water quality requirements shown in Table 2:IRWD intends on using a membrane bioreactor to achieve these effluent goals. This paper will focus on the procurement process, the lessons learnt from the site visits and workshops with the vendors. The paper also discusses how the knowledge accumulated during the procurement process affected the design of the facilities.