TREVOSE, PA, Jan. 26, 2015 -- Covanta's Delaware Valley energy-from-waste facility, located in the city of Chester, Pa., has saved 1.3 million gallons per day (MGD) from local water supplies by recently installing advanced water reuse technology from GE (NYSE: GE), an American multinational conglomerate corporation, in the power plant's cooling tower.
Covanta Delaware Valley upgraded the facility by installing GE's RePAK combination ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO) system as a tertiary treatment package. The new system enabled the plant to reuse the 1.3 MGD of treated discharge water from a nearby municipal wastewater treatment plant for cooling purposes.
The Chester facility generates up to 90 megawatts of clean energy from 3,510 tons per day of municipal solid waste. Previously, the plant used 1.3 MGD -- or nearly 5 million liters per day -- of municipal drinking water in its waste conversion process, costing the company thousands of dollars in daily water purchases.
GE installed two RePAK-450 trains, each producing 450 gallons per minute of purified water. As a result, Covanta Delaware Valley has eliminated the need to purchase the 1.3 MGD of local drinking water per day, which results in a substantial financial savings in addition to extremely favorable environmental benefits.
Covanta chose a combined treatment technology approach because the typical organic and dissolved mineral content of the wastewater requires additional treatment to be suitable for use as cooling tower makeup. RO was selected as the technology of choice, and UF was required as the pretreatment solution.
GE's RePAK equipment was delivered in 2014, with commissioning taking place the same year, making Covanta Delaware Valley the first North American company to deploy GE's RePAK technology. GE also honored Covanta with the Return on Environment (ROE) Award -- honoring a significant environmental (water, energy, resource) accomplishment -- to recognize the company for its noteworthy reductions in water usage.
See also:
"SC to be home of GE's first Power & Water advanced manufacturing plant"
"WEFTEC 2014: Triple announcement from GE"
About GE
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