LOWELL : Water test facility planned
Posted on Thursday, July 10, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/230892/
Northwest Arkansas’ top drinking water supplier is building a small plant that it hopes will help treat water more efficiently. If the plant works, it could lead to lower water rates in the future, said Larry Lloyd, Beaver Water District’s chief operating officer. The $ 300, 000 test facility in
1 Lowell — planned for 2 / 2 years — is expected to be operational by next spring, Lloyd said. Operators there will be able to test treatment techniques on small quantities of water, allowing the water district to better estimate what it needs to do to produce clean water, he said.
“If we’re able to save 10 percent of chemical cost with the pilot plant, it’ll pay for itself in three years,” he said.
The plant will treat about 10 gallons per minute. For comparison, the water district’s Joe M. Steele treatment plant in Lowell treats 140 million gallons a day as it provides water to Northwest Arkansas’ four biggest cities.
Beaver Water District provides water to its four wholesale customers — Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers and Bentonville — which in turn supply water to more than a dozen client municipalities and secondary municipalities.
The 1, 200-square-foot test plant, being built as an addition to an existing building, would have been helpful this year when heavy rains caused high turbidity — muddy conditions — in the lake, Lloyd said.
Because the pilot plant mimics normal treatment techniques, operators can try different types of treatments or test hunches and see if their ideas work.
“In a small amount of time, we can see if a chemical dosage change works, or if the use of different chemical will work at pilot plant scale,” he said.
And if it does, the water district can apply it to its main operations.
This aspect of the plant can save the water district and its municipal customers money, he said, because the price of chemicals to treat the water is increasing rapidly. The plant can also be used for research, he said. Two pumps and basins will be set up so operators can have a control agent to experiment. They can also create mock turbidity events and see how best to clear the water. Equipment, including settling basins and pipes, will be made of a transparent material so chemical reactions can be observed. “If it doesn’t work, we haven’t caused any serious problems,” Lloyd said.
To contact this reporter: aotoole@arkansasonline. com