New Product Wins Coveted Design News Award

Vortechnics, has won first place for "Excellence in Design" from Design News magazine, a design-engineering publication with more than 170,000 subscribers.

Vortechnics stormwater experts Daniel Cobb, R&D manager, and Vaikko Allen II, technical manager, developed VortSentry to meet the expanding demands of the marketplace for products that treat pollutants in urban runoff. "From new schools to shopping centers, virtually every new development project in the United States must have stormwater treatment according to the EPA. What's more, regulations on which stormwater treatment practices are approved vary from state to state," Cobb said. "The variations of project sites such as hydraulic issues magnify this diversity even more. So the challenge before us in developing the VortSentry was both complex and exhilarating. We set out to design a product that would give engineers another option when trying to balance their water quality objectives with all these other variables."

Launched to market in late 2003, the VortSentry is designed to capture sediment and free-floating pollutants from urban runoff. It can be used as a standalone best management practice (BMP) or as a pretreatment system used in conjunction with other stormwater treatment devices. The units utilize a combination of vortex motion and flow controls to remove contaminated sediment, oil and debris from runoff before the water discharges into surface waters such as ponds, lakes and rivers. If not removed from stormwater runoff, the pollutants can accumulate in surface waters, damaging ecosystems and diminishing habitats for native plant, fish and bird species.

With no moving parts and a clear view to the captured pollutants, the VortSentry is easy to install and maintain and offers a compact, lightweight design that is ideal for congested sites. Well suited for applications where stormwater regulations require that pollutants are reduced to the maximum extent practicable, the VortSentry can be used as a standalone best management practice (BMP) or as a pretreatment system used in conjunction with other stormwater treatment devices. Models are configured with a flow partition to ensure that the rate of flow through the treatment chamber will not cause pollutant re-entrainment, even as the total flow rate through the system increases.

Source: Vortechnics