Hydro International recently announced the receipt of a $1.8 million contract for grit removal with the city of Clearwater, Fla., making the deal its largest contract ever for grit-removal systems.
Hydro will supply the city with five Grit King advanced hydrodynamic separator units to upgrade the grit-removal processes at two of Clearwater’s three wastewater treatment plants. The 12-ft diameter Grit King units will replace the existing high-energy vortex grit-removal systems at the plants.
The purchase came as part of a larger initiative to upgrade the headworks at Clearwater’s Marshall Street and East Advanced Pollution Control Facilities.
“The city was looking for improved performance and increased reliability, and after conducting pilot testing with the Grit King units and development of a system design that could be retrofitted into the city’s existing headworks, we determined that this solution more than meets the plants’ needs,” said Thomas Friedrich, P.E., at Jones Edmunds & Associates of Tampa, Fla., the engineering firm representing the city.
During the design phase of the plant improvement project, Hydro drove a Grit King mobile pilot unit to Clearwater and participated in a head-to-head trial with one of the existing high-energy vortex systems at the Marshall Street plant. The data showed the Grit King removing up to 23 times the grit as the existing system.
“We are extremely proud the city of Clearwater has seen the value Hydro International’s Grit King provides in terms of grit-removal efficiency,” said Neil Raymond, Hydro’s general manager of wastewater operations. “Grit that is not captured in the process degrades the machinery in a wastewater treatment plant at an alarming rate. Clearwater’s investment in new equipment and new processes shows a level of foresight that will serve constituents well.”
Source: Hydro International
