The primary objectives of DC Water’s Biosolids Management Program are to reduce the costs of solids processing and managing biosolids from the 370-mgd-capacity Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant (BPAWTP), and to improve DC Water’s sustainability profile. Costs will be reduced by largely replacing the current Class B lime stabilization process with a new Class A anaerobic digestion process that will reduce the quantity of solids hauled to beneficial use by over 50 percent. Class A biosolids will be achieved through the use of the Thermal Hydrolysis Process (THP) preceding digestion. DC Water will further benefit through the recovery of biogas from the digestion process to generate electric power (offset electric power purchases from the local utility) and produce steam to support the THP. Because the economic benefits of the program are substantial, there is urgency to implement the program and begin receiving these benefits. For this and other reasons, the design-build-delivery method was selected to procure the main processing elements of the program. This paper expands on the development of design concepts to meet the project objectives and the incorporation of these concepts within the Request For Proposals (RFPs) for design-build services. Besides meeting the over-arching program objectives, the new solids processing elements – called the Main Process Train (MPT) – must be “inserted” into the existing BPAWTP, resulting in design challenges related to site constraints, site infrastructure constraints (power and utilities to serve the MPT), the need to interface with the existing plantwide distributed control system, and incorporation of existing facilities into the MPT. The inclusion of the proprietary THP process (by Cambi™) posed further constraints.

Criteria for Prescriptive Design Build Focused on DC Water’s Biosolids Program Objectives and Constraints
Authors: Gary Newman, Perry Schafer, Don Stern (Parsons), Tom Chapman , Eron Jacobson , Edmond Low, Jeff Garber, Salil Kharkar (DC Water) and Duncan Mukira (DC Water)
2012 Residuals and Biosolids Conference
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