Speaking

Establishing a new National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for wastewater discharges is a critical step in the development of a new facility or manufacturing process within an industrial plant. This presentation will highlight the challenges of developing a new industrial wastewater discharge system and lessons learned about the permit and start up processes that will help keep your project on schedule.

Wastewater management is a critical facet of an industrial facility that must be accounted for in the plant development and requires a separate permit(s). Obtaining the permit(s) for these systems can be a time-consuming process and cause delays in the schedule or facility opening. These delays frequently occur because the time required to obtain the permits and proper methods for achieving compliance with new NPDES discharge limits are not properly accounted for in the overall design, cost estimating, and development of the new facility or process.

Sofidel America is the largest and most sustainable tissue paper manufacturing plant in the U.S. located in Circleville, Ohio. The new plant’s wastewater industrial operations were recently brought on line. We will use Sofidel’s Circleville plant as a case study to review the process used to integrate a new NPDES permit. We will detail this process focusing on the following:  

• Initial estimates of the hydraulic and pollutant loading of the process wastewater 
• Establishment of the new NPDES limits
• Wastewater treatment process design solutions implemented to meet NPDES limits
• Start-up issues that must be accounted for in the facility planning

Emerging contaminants are an ongoing issue for environmental professionals, including designers, regulators, managers and operators of industrial wastewater treatment facilities. This ranges from polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the 1970s and 1980s to oxygenated fuel additives such as methyl-tert butyl ether (MtBE) in the 1990s and 2000s, pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) and other endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in the 2000s and 2010s. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and toxins associated with harmful algal blooms such as microcystin and other cyanotoxins are the most recent ones to join the list. There are also contaminants that we have known about previously but are now receiving increased regulatory attention such as total dissolved solids (TDS). 

This presentation will focus on PFAS, cyanotoxins and TDS. Specific focus will be paid to their use in and importance to industry, their chemical structure and behavior, regulatory timeline and anticipated upcoming regulations, and effective methods for their removal in relevant industrial waste streams.