TREVOSE, Pa. — By installing GE’s advanced RePAK water reuse technology in its cooling tower, Covanta’s Delaware Valley energy-from-waste facility located in Chester, Pennsylvania, has saved 1.3 million gallons a day (MGD) of water from local water supplies, according to a press release.
To recognize the noteworthy reductions in water use the company has achieved, Covanta received GE’s Return on Environment (ROE) Award, stated the release.
The plant, the release reported, “generates up to 90 megawatts of clean energy from 3,510 tons per day of municipal solid waste.”
The release continued that costing thousands of dollars in daily water purchases, the Chester facility previously was using 1.3 MGD, or around 5 million liters a day, of municipal drinking water in its waste conversion process.
The new GE RePAK combination ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO) system as a tertiary treatment package enabled Covanta Delaware Valley, for its cooling tower, to reuse 1.3 MGD of treated discharge water from a nearby municipal wastewater treatment plant, noted the release.
“By installing GE’s water treatment technology, we are able to reuse the nearby wastewater treatment plant’s wastewater effluent that otherwise would have been directly discharged, enabling us to save over a million gallons per day in drinking water for local residents rather than using it for industrial purposes,” said Covanta Delaware Valley Facility Manager Tim Gregan. “Not only are we reducing the stress on local drinking supplies, but also the environmental impacts of the wastewater treatment plant and the use of potable water by our facility.”
Read the entire release here.
