Overview
Shipyard Stormwater Mop-Up (1999-200)
Project Team:
- Biopraxis
- Chester Engineers
- General Dynamics NASSCO
June 1999 - January 2001
NSRP ASE Investment: $334K
Industry Investment: $367K
Objective:
Evaluate a new technology under development for remediation of groundwater contamination (MOP-UP®) for potential applications in shipyard stormwater runoff treatment.
Summary:
By combining this technology with Actiflo®, it takes heavy metal contaminants to non-detectable levels Biopraxis of San Diego has developed a new technology for heavy metal treatment, known as MOP-UP®. The technology couples a new family of reagents with a variety of off-the-shelf hardware to produce treatment systems tailored to individual needs. The MOP-UP® reagents act like absorbents, in that they are particulate and take up dissolved heavy metals. However, they have been shown in a Department of Energy project to take heavy metals and radionuclides to much lower residual levels than can be achieved by other technologies, even in heavily contaminated and highly complex wastewaters. Radiotracers have shown that metals can be taken into the subparts per billion and even subparts per trillion levels in groundwater, even under strongly acidic conditions. The NSRP project evaluated the adaptation of this groundwater remediation technology for use in treating stormwater runoff. The technology was found to be very economical. Even in complex groundwater and industrial waste-water samples, the particulate MOP-UP® reagents have been shown to be capable of taking up several times their own weight in metal contaminants. This means that a MOP-UP® treatment system will require few consumables and yield very little sludge. In addition, the simple MOP-UP® reagent production process yields low-cost reagents under environmentally friendly conditions. Chester Engineers selected the separation hardware to use in the pilot test. One approach is Actiflo®, a technology developed and widely used in Europe for drinking water and stormwater treatment that was recently introduced to the U.S. A single Actiflo® treatment train can go from zero to steady-state operation at 90 million gallons per day within 15 minutes. In addition, the Actiflo® footprint is extremely small, with a nominal flow rate of 60 gpm/square foot, and the operating costs are very low.
The Actiflo® system uses very low amounts of chemicals to treat total suspended solids, total biochemical oxygen demand, total phosphorus, chemical oxygen demand and fecal coliforms with high efficiency. By coupling MOP-UP® with Actiflo®, the research team used fewer chemicals while achieving better treatment and took heavy metal contaminants to non-detectable levels. At the conclusion of this project, Biopraxis was unable to secure investment funding to develop sufficient quantities of the MOP-UP® reagent for commercial use. However, a team member, Chester Engineers, part of ATS Group, was able to successfully demonstrate that the Actiflo® technology can be used to treat stormwater runoff from both industrial and municipal sites.
Key Deliverables:
Final Report – Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited
Point of Contact:
Ann E. Grow, Biopraxis