Wastewater Treatment Plant by Veolia Takes into Account Space Constraints

Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies (Thailand) has provided a wastewater treatment plant to multinational food manufacturer Associated British Foods (Thailand).

This project integrates several of Veolia’s technologies, including its Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF), Biothane Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB), AnoxKaldnes Biological Activated Sludge (BAS), and Hydrotech Drumfilter – within ABF’s Ovaltine manufacturing plant in Samutprakarn, Bangkok.

Veolia says the end-to-end wastewater package will allow ABF to handle its wastewater treatment needs on premise, catering to both existing and future flow requirements projected for the next decade.

Faced with the challenge of designing a wastewater treatment plant located within the client’s space constrained manufacturing grounds, Veolia recommended technologies that could effectively treat ABF’s wastewater volumes and COD loads. Veolia’s Michael Poonpipat says the company’s water and wastewater systems’ compact designs take into account “space constraints that clients face without compromising on performance.”

Veolia’s DAF unit pretreats the raw wastewater, removing fat, oil, and grease (FOG) before the Biothane UASB anaerobic treatment process. The UASB anaerobic system then converts COD present in the conditioned wastewater into biogas.

Veolia’s AnoxKaldnes BAS, a combination of Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor (MBBR) technology with conventional activated sludge (AS), is next applied to promote a stable and more efficient activated sludge process with improved sludge settling characteristics. The effluent then enters a second DAF clarifier unit for biological sludge separation, before the Hydrotech Drumfilter system separates the remaining particles from the wastewater.

Through Veolia’s suite of wastewater products and services, the client can obtain biogas in the process of treating its wastewater, which becomes an alternative energy source for heating boiler systems that are used in manufacturing ABF’s products.

Veolia’s desalination technology, in use at a pilot program for Masdar’s renewable-energy powered desalination plant in Abu Dhabi, has already lowered the electrical consumption performances by 7 percent compared to the contractual target initially required by Masdar, Veolia said in November. These energy cost savings can be added to those generated by a new pretreatment design, which can save 25 percent on civil works and, therefore, reduce the footprint of the plant as well as its CAPEX, the company says.