Tue, 12/13/2016 - 12:45

ORLANDO (Dec. 13, 2016)—Routine maintenance at the Curtis H. Stanton Energy Center, and the need to shut down a generation unit at the power plant, left Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) with a decreased power capacity to treat its wastewater through regular methods. By providing a mobile water filtration system and a mobile seawater desalination reverse osmosis (RO) system, GE enabled OUC to continuously treat its wastewater during the outage, the company announced in a statement. OUC uses GE’s brine concentrators and evaporators on-site to treat wastewater and achieve zero liquid discharge (ZLD). However, since the evaporators’ treatment capacity were reduced by the power outage, the OUC needed an option to bridge the gap for the remaining wastewater to be treated. “The planned shutdown of the power generation unit impacted our ability to evaporate and treat wastewater at the Curtis H. Stanton Energy Center. Water & Process Technologies’ mobile water solution allowed us to seamlessly treat wastewater during this scheduled maintenance and not miss a beat,” said Tom Dzoba, SEC operations manager, Orlando Utilities Commission. “Our situation also was unique in that the water had high TDS, but GE’s mobile filtration and RO unit made sure the business of power generation ran smoothly.” OUC’s power plant has very high feedwater total dissolved solids (TDS)—inorganic salts, minerals and organic matter dissolved in water—and needed to treat its wastewater at the same rate during a planned outage. During the outage, GE’s Water & Process Technologies provided its mobile units to the site to treat the power plant’s wastewater for four months. The mobile water units provided 200 gallons per minute and allowed OUC to keep up with its wastewater treatment volume during the outage. “Regardless if it is a scheduled outage or an emergency request, our mobile water systems provide guaranteed water quality and quantity, which is something that the OUC relies on to meet the needs of its community. Complying with environmental regulations and handling various influent waters, our fleet of trailer-based systems can get a power plant up and running and keep it running to meet water treatment requirements,” said Kevin Cassidy, global leader, engineered systems—GE’s Water & Process Technologies.