Pacific Rim - CITY OF BURLINGAME - CA

PROBLEM:

This project was quite interesting. An equipment supplier and general contractor asked Pacific Rim to assist them by creating a scrubber design that would work around an expensive "sole source" proprietary equipment specification written by the project consulting engineer without patent infringement.

This was quite challenging as the construction documents for the wastewater plant upgrade were severely deficient. Noteworthy among the deficiencies was the electrical instrumentation engineering for the dewatering building. The drawings named the components but lacked a workable control strategy and details necessary to actually construct it.

SOLUTION:

Pacific Rim designed the overall odor control system, and also designed and then built the control panel and software for this system.

The design was carefully crafted to meet the spirit of the specification in a way that did not violate the patent. Pacific Rim then adroitly convinced the consulting engineer that this equipment design was acceptable.

The defective electrical engineering was resolved by proactively interacting with the consulting engineer and the many material suppliers. After numerous site visits and discussions, a complete plan was devised and the overall system became buildable.

We chose to utilize a two stage counter-current wet scrubbing system. Each of the two stages utilized a unique scrubbing environment. Individually they addressed key components of the overall odor mix, and collectively the chemistries of each stage were designed to work together to minimize chemical usage and thereby reduce operating costs.

This process lowered the overall "carbon footprint" and contributed to the abatement of greenhouse gas emission. The GREEN design features incorporated in this design are typical for Pacific Rim.

This design is user friendly as well. The control system is intuitive. It utilizes bar graphs to compare process variable set points with current process variables. It also provides solutions for resolution of alarm conditions, thereby allowing prompt corrections without the need to go back to the manual.

The metering pump stand is unusual in that it includes a process flow diagram so operators and maintenance personnel can quickly and reliably "turn the right valve".

Pacific Rim overcame administrative challenges to give the client a user friendly system at a lower initial cost and lower operational cost.

CITY OF BURLINGAME
Image of the overall scrubbing system


CITY OF BURLINGAME
Image of the scrubber control system