BHT Enters Sichuan with BioDopp for Municipal Wastewater
Municipal domestic wastewater treatment technology has undergone rapid development in last twenty years in China. The processes have evolved for generations since 1998, when China started accelerating construction of municipal domestic wastewater treatment plants. Along the market development, players have achieved different levels of performance. Now there are thousands of enterprises in the wastewater treatment industry. In early times, due to weak public environmental awareness and loose policies, many enterprises had no core technology and built wastewater treatment plant by replicating designs of other plants. Many enterprises were closed during inspections, but reopened once the inspections were complete throughout the urbanization. In the context of accelerating urbanization, may projects in operation can hardly meet the current demand, while the national industrial structure is facing strategic upgrade. Projects with high energy consumption and extensive operation will be gradually phased out. The municipal wastewater market is to undergo a comprehensive reshuffle in the next three to five years.
Choice of Technology for Phase II of Lezhi Project
At a meeting for discussing the Lezhi County Municipal Wastewater Project in Sichuan, Chen Renyi, Chairman of the project investor, describe the choice of technology to the government officials in a resolute voice: “We choose the BioDopp technology for the expansion project because not only its technical advantages, but also the young team behind it who are committed to improvements in the worldwide wastewater operation market”. The Lezhi County Municipal Wastewater Project invested by Chen Renyi’s company was in urgent need for implementing phase II to expanding its capacity, as it was facing problems of doubled wastewater amount and high energy consumption after operation for three years. Selection of the right technology was a hard job. Chen Renyi and his team finally made the difficult decision, after technical exchange and field investigation after more than half a year.
As recalled by Chen Renyi, the decision was difficult to be made because of two reasons. Firstly, the BioDopp process had never been used in Sichuan four years ago, so it was difficult to persuade the government officials and experts. Secondly, the BioDopp process was the newest among the options, so was its technology and management team, whose average age was just 30.
Chen Renyi, former deputy to the Sichuan Provincial People's Congress and renowned investor of municipal projects in Sichuan, has been committed to charity activities for many years. He has invested in many garbage and wastewater treatment projects in Sichuan as one of the earliest advocator of BOT projects in the municipal wastewater treatment industry in Sichuan.
Lezhi is a county of Ziyang Municipality, Sichuan, located on the watershed of the Tuojiang River and the Fujiang River. Deficiencies in drainage pipelines of the country caused various heavily polluted surface water and groundwater, posing material adverse effects to the downstream urban environment. The Tuojiang River and the Fujiang River flow through the county seat of Lezhi. Expansion urban areas and communities along the river banks brought huge risks to the urban ecosystem. As a result, the Lezhi Country Urban Wastewater Treatment Plant was in urgent need for expansion.
Phase I of the Lezhi Country Urban Wastewater Treatment Plant was put into operation in 2009 with a capacity of 10,000 tonnes/day. Phase II was to have a doubled capacity to be 20,000 tonnes/day. The effluent would be directly discharged into the rivers, so its quality must meet the requirements for class 1A, while the effluent of phase I was only class 1B. This was almost an impossible for the Carrousel technology used in phase I.
Competition of Technical Options
The technology to be chosen by Chen Renyi for the wastewater plant had to address a wide range of considerations. Besides all engineering requirements, the most important thing is seamless interfacing with phase I. It was related to reclamation of water of the country in the future, and a key and bold decision being made by Chen Renyi Sichuan, though he had been working with wastewater treatment projects in Sichuan for ten years.
With years of experience in the wastewater treatment industry, he has unique and share eyesight in the market. He understood the advantages and disadvantages of most technologies available in the market, and he knew the technology to be chosen for phase II would bring about notable changes to the future of the municipal wastewater treatment market in Sichuan, and benefit local wastewater treatment enterprise. The Lezhi County Municipal Wastewater Treatment Project has been a typical case. With the rapid economic development and refinement of environmental governance policies in China, a lot of similar projects for upgrade and expansion will emerge in the next few years.
On the desk in front of Chen Renyi were technical proposals of the options, which he had read many times. The A2/O process has the benefit of nitrogen and phosphorus removal, featuring good effluent quality, stable operation, easy management, and proven operation records, but it required more structures, machinery and equipment which cannot be accommodated by the spaces available and the budget. The CASS process had compact and simple construction, and was able to resist the impact caused by the maximum flow, and produce satisfactory effluent, but the installed capacity was high with equipment not fully utilized, high electricity consumption, complex management, and high labor costs. The Carrousel-2000 oxidation ditch process was already used been in phase I, featuring a simple process, easy management, satisfactory treatment results, strong impact resistance, but its total investment and land use were excessively high. Moreover, repair of the systems had caused great trouble to the owner. The BioDopp technology outperforms the traditional processes, was able to save more than 40% of the total energy consumption, and take up 50% less land compared with phase I. The operation and management was simple, efficient and stable, but he had never known the technology before.
These technical options proposed by the bidders represented the mainstream technologies with strengths for particular wastewater and project expansion conditions. With continuous upgrading of technology, the advantages of traditional processes became less compelling. As the private investment entered the rapid developing water market, new technologies represented by BioDopp with low energy consumption, small footprint and high effluent quality BioDopp started to gain momentum. Moreover, the team of BHT Environ, holder of the BioDopp technology, was driving technical changes through their extraordinary capacity of innovation.
Unrivalled Advantages of BioDopp
BHT Environ is a professional provider of process packages and TIO for wastewater treatment and sludge disposal, and is a national-level high-tech enterprise founded by a team of holders of doctoral degree from Chinese and overseas universities. The core members of its team is aged about 30, with rich experience from a large number of domestic and foreign industrial wastewater treatment projects and dozens of large typical municipal wastewater projects. They fully understand the characteristics and requirements in upgrading and expansion of municipal wastewater treatment projects in China. Committed to environmental protection, Pan Jiantong, Chairman of BHT Environ, promised that they would build the Lezhi County Municipal Wastewater Expansion Project into the first model project of BHT Environ in Sichuan
After completion of phase II, the results for half a year operation shocked the community of wastewater treatment in Sichuan. The BioDopp technology demonstrated outstanding advantages in terms of energy consumption, operation and labor costs. Chen Renyi feels satisfied with the performance. As an investor, he knows a bold and far-sighted choice would be subject to enormous objection, but when it succeeds, the benefits would also be enormous to the business.
At the Lezhi County Urban Wastewater Treatment Plant, the contents of COD and total nitrogen were 350mg/L and 50mg/L respectively in the intake water. The ammonia nitrogen content would increase in winter. The high ammonia nitrogen content and its cyclical changes made Phase I unable to continue. After implementation of Phase II, the BioDopp technology removes COD to a satisfactory level and removes ammonia nitrogen and total nitrogen totally under micro-aerobic conditions. It reduces the energy consumption by nearly 50% with an efficient aeration system and variable frequency control system.
The main costs of small scale municipal wastewater treatment are those for electricity and labor, accounting for about 70% of the total costs. Along the industry’s development, labor costs are expected to rise continuously, together with the economic development. Due to simple operation without complex work, the BioDopp process can save a lot of labor costs.
In operation of the BioDopp process, the activated sludge, air supply and pollution loads keep balance on its own, and the huge backflow rate makes the system strongly resistant to impact. “Such resistance to impact is unrivalled by traditional techniques. Although BioDopp is new in market, continuous enhancements to it have attracted attention of the industry. It has been adopted in many projects around the country. BHT Environ works to apply their insights in processes in the domestic wastewater treatment industry, contribute to the community and for the benefit of the people.” said Dr. Chen Kaihua, CTO of BHT Environ.