Doing More With Less – Leveraging Existing Assets to Manage Capital and Operating Costs

The Broad Run Water Reclamation Facility (BRWRF), owned and operated by Loudoun Water, is an 11 mgd advanced treatment facility that employs a 5-Stage biological nutrient removal (BNR) process, followed by membrane filtration and granular activated carbon (GAC) to meet stringent effluent concentration limits (e.g. COD of 10 mg/L, TSS of 1 mg/L, TKN of 1 mg/L, TP of 0.1 mg/L, Turbidity of 0.5 NTU). Due to rapid and continued growth in their service area and nearing the capacity of the facility, Loudoun Water embarked on a master planning effort to identify the best path forward for the future expansion of the BRWRF. A key component of the master planning effort was to identify opportunities that would allow Loudoun Water to maximize the capacity and performance of the existing infrastructure to reduce capital and operating cost investments while still meeting stringent effluent limits. Three key opportunities were identified that included a transition from flow-paced to load-paced chemical addition, optimized chemically enhanced primary treatment, and re-rating of the granular activated carbon process using rapid small-scale column testing (RSSCT). Through these opportunities Loudoun Water was able to defer approximately 24 million dollars in capital expenditure for facility expansion and immediately realized savings on methanol costs by approximately 10%.