City of Columbus Biosolids Management Optimization and Systems Analysis

The City of Columbus, Ohio (City) is planning for improvements to the solids treatment and disposal systems at their two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and their composting facility. In planning for these improvements, the City wanted to ensure that economic and environmental factors were considered in the analysis. In order to facilitate this analysis, the City joined The Ohio State University Center for Resilience and requested that Malcolm Pirnie help to develop a material flow optimization tool, EcoFlow™, which would analyze the solids processes and estimate economic and environmental impacts including greenhouse gas emissions. As a first step, a baseline model of the existing biosolids processes was created, and then optimization scenarios were run using the EcoFlow™ software. These runs resulted in operational scenarios which would decrease costs, energy usage, and greenhouse gas emissions, all while utilizing the existing processes.