Operating an Over Built Plant

The City of Bozeman built a 22 MGD microfiltration plant in 2014 to meet the demands of a growing city. The plant is built to basically plug and play additional treatment equipment for 36 MGD. The current demand averages 5 MGD with peak demand in the summer of just over 9 MGD. As a result of this the plant is vastly overbuilt for the current flows and creates difficulties in operations during low demand. Over the past 7 years operators have developed ways to make the plant run better at low flows. This includes creating back pressure on membrane feed pumps, laying up racks for 30 days, and rotating equipment in use. This presentation will go over the improvements seen through operator initiative and engineering know how.