P.M. Kester
Guild Associates, Inc., Ohio, United States
Keywords: wastewater treatment, foam flotation, greywater
Department of War (DoW) installations face increasing challenges in managing water resources in regions experiencing water stress, drought, or growing competition for municipal water. Filtration is pervasive in water treatment systems that remove surfactants, organics, particulates, microorganisms, and other contaminants from wastewater for generating potable water or non-potable water for applications including cooling, vehicle washing, and irrigation. However, filtration membranes are plagued by fouling that leads to significant logistical and operational burdens related to cleaning and replacement, hindering adoption of burgeoning technologies for wastewater treatment and reuse. Guild has designed and demonstrated a pilot-scale Contaminant Removal via Adsorptive Flotation Treatment (CRAFT) system, a novel continuous foam flotation technology that removes surfactants, particulates, microorganisms, and PFAS from wastewater to prolong the lifetime and efficacy of downstream filtration systems. The system has been demonstrated with greywater, a promising source of domestic wastewater for reuse to decrease potable water requirements at DoW facilities. The CRAFT system has demonstrated 80% removal of organics and a 66% decrease in turbidity of synthetic greywater, surpassing the performance of ultrafiltration membranes. Full scale systems using this technology will be containerized and designed to serve 1,000 personnel, saving 24,000 gallons of potable water per day.