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Research may pay off
KRIS KETONEN
11/06/2009

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Three years from now, Thunder Bay could have a lucrative business on its hands if all goes well at the Bare Point water treatment plant.

City council approved a project this week that will look at how to optimize the plant‘s performance, which could lead to the creation of inexpensive and environmentally friendly cleaning solutions, process engineer Carl Goodwin said in an interview.

And it could be big, he added.

“We‘re looking to do a detergent that . . . is environmentally friendly, so it bio-decomposes, so when you put it into the sewer and it goes into our sewage treatment plant, then that organic process there will easily remove it,” he said.

Also, Goodwin said, among the chemicals the treatment plant currently uses is bleach, which has to be neutralized before it goes into the sewage system. Both the bleach and the chemical used to neutralize it have a small toxic element in them, he said. The plan is to come up with something new to eliminate the need for bleach and neutralizer.

The business – should it come to fruition – is a year-three endeavour, Goodwin said.

The city will spend $129,000 on a new membrane filtration plant for Bare Point, which will accept the membrane modules Bare Point currently uses. Goodwin said the modules are about the size of a briefcase, and the membranes themselves take the form of small, spaghetti-like white tubes.

The new filtration plant will be separate from the main water filtration process at Bare Point, Goodwin said.

“The first little while, what we‘ll do is run it exactly like we‘re running it at (Bare Point),” he said.

“And during that time, we‘ll take parts of the membrane off‘‘ and take them to Lakehead University to be examined under high-intensity microscopes to determine how well the cleaning solutions and methods are working.

The plant will be able to start using other chemicals and methods, and putting them under the same scrutiny.

“We‘ll be able to start saying ’OK, what are some other chemicals that we know have similar cleaning abilities, although don‘t have the potential environmental negative side that our current chemicals have?‘” Goodwin said.

He said they haven‘t worked out any potential numbers for the business end of things – he can‘t estimate exactly how much demand there would be, or how much revenue it would generate. However, the plant the city is purchasing is made by GE Zenon, and the model is used all over the world.

“If we can develop something that . . . can be more generalized than the balance that we would find in this area, it might be scary big,” he said. “We spend a fair amount on cleaning chemicals here.”

Estimates in a report to city council put the savings in cleaning chemicals alone due to the new membrane plant at $24,000 a year. In addition, the city stands to save about $10,000 in energy costs, and about $47,000 in membrane costs.

GE Zenon plants are also used in much larger centres, such as southern Ontario cities, Goodwin said. They spend a lot more on chemicals due to volume.

The local project was proposed by Lakehead University chemical engineering professor Baoqiang Liao, who previously worked for Zenon.

“I proposed to optimize the performance of the membrane filtration plant (at Bare Point),” Liao said.

He said the new cleaning agents and a spinoff business are possible, but they‘re a long-term consideration.

The operating cost reductions and reduced environmental impact are the short-term goals, he said.

“Membrane fouling is a big issue for a drinking water membrane filtration plant,” Liao said. “You have to clean the membrane, you have to use chemicals, and you‘re going to stop production.

“If you can optimize the membrane filtration process to reduce membrane fouling, then you can save a big chunk of money.”

Liao said they‘ll bring on some Lakehead graduate students to help out, in addition to providing facilities for the project.
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