Pacific Rim - METRO BIOSOLIDS PROCESS FACILITY, SAN DIEGO, CA

PROBLEM:

As part of a federally mandated upgrade to their city wide wastewater treatment infrastructure, the City of San Diego contracted for the design and construction of a facility to treat wastewater bio-solids.

When complete, it was found that the odor control system was not satisfactory. Furthermore the equipment was self destructing. Pacific Rim was assigned the task of figuring out the extent of the problem, and recommending a solution.

SOLUTION:

This investigation included a detailed analysis of the assumptions made by the previous engineering firm.

The hypothesis from this investigation were then confirmed or denied through deductive logic that included sample gathering under varying operating conditions.

A mobile laboratory was beneficial in this undertaking. It allowed essentially immediate feedback during the systematic operational studies.

The mobile laboratory was also instrumental in determining the source for fugitive odors. We were able to gather and analyze the spurious odors, then trace the chemical "fingerprints" back to the source within this large facility.

Without the mobile laboratory, this project would have been considerably more difficult and time consuming.

An overview of the odor control system at the MBC facility. The overall treatment included two wet scrubbing processes and a carbon adsorber process. The processes turned out to be right, but the equipment sizing and choice of materials in some of the equipment was inappropriate.