Wastewater Treatment Plant Upgrade

The membrane plant was first constructed in 2008 to treat the wastewater from an expanded Maple Leaf Food’s facility, but the desire to improve water treatment and expand capacity for the entire city caused the city of Brandon to seek an additional upgrade to increase the operating peak day flow to 36 million litres per day (mld) or 9.5 million gallons per day (mgd). The upgraded facility, designed by AECOM’s Winnipeg office, will treat the waste from the city’s existing plants as well as additional waste from a Pfizer manufacturing plant and will be designed to accommodate an increasing population and a growing manufacturing capacity. The upgraded facility will include pre-fabricated, stainless steel membrane tanks and equipment skids to minimise site footprint and construction costs on site. The new membrane trains will be integrated with the existing MBR facility to ensure a seamless, control package in the centralised facility.

Under a contract with the city of Brandon, GE will supply MBR technology and equipment featuring ZeeWeed reinforced, hollow-fibre membranes, which have been proven in more than two decades of wastewater treatment and water reuse. ZeeWeed (ZW) 500 technology is an advanced filtrationtechnology that separates particles, bacteria and viruses from water orwastewater. Nearly 1,000 plants worldwide use this technology to produce superior quality drinking water and to meet or exceed stringent wastewater treatment and water reuse standards.

The upgrade of the plant’s wastewater treatment processes with the GE MBR technology will add six ZW500D trains to the existing three trains; six mirror-image, stainless steel membrane tanks installed back-to-back; six mirror-image pump skids to improve equipment accessibility and simplify maintenance; an optimised aeration strategy to more effectively utilise air from existing membrane blowers to achieve 10/30 aeration; the integration of the three existing GE ZW500D trains; and the reuse of existing backpulse tanks and cleaning chemical systems. This will expand both the plant capacity and the city’s future ability to supply recycled water to industrial and other perspective customers.