Project Briefs:
Steel Manufacturing Facility Recycles Its Industrial Wastewater with Ultrafiltration Technology
Project Overview
A Midwest steel manufacturing plant needed to replace its aging wastewater treatment system, while also improving its water recycling capabilities. SAMCO worked with the facility to design and manufacture an automated ultrafiltration (UF) system to treat the client’s highly contaminated wastewater. SAMCO’s compact design reduced the previous system footprint by 75%, while drastically reducing metal and phosphate contaminant levels to meet stringent specifications for process water.
Objective
Reduce water consumption by implementing a new UF system to treat recycled industrial wastewater for reuse as process water.
Scope of Service
Challenges
- Drop metals to below discharge limits
- Prepare waste stream for re-use
- Handle large amounts of suspended solids
Solution
To meet the client’s goal of recycling metals- and phosphate-contaminated wastewater, SAMCO custom-designed a treatment solution to replace an existing physical-chemical system. The new system leverages dead-end UF technology with fully-automated backwash cycles, flux recovery, and a unique membrane cleaning process to maximize UF membrane performance despite a challenging wastewater. The system offers a capacity of 400 GPM up to 1000 GPM peak, and has minimized the client’s need to source fresh process water, and dramatically reduced the client’s wastewater discharge volumes.
Technology
SAMCO’s project deliverables and equipment included:
- Dead-end UF unit
- Automated backwash & enhanced chemical cleaning system
- Front-end reactor with pre-screening for solids reduction
- Forwarding pumps
- Final collection tank
- Three-skid design for turnkey startup