The Water Replenishment District of Southern California, (WRD) owns the Leo J. Vander Lans Water Treatment Facility. The facility is one of the first permitted advanced water treatment facilities in California and was originally designed with a treatment capacity of 3 million gallons per day (MGD). The facility uses microfiltration (MF), reverse osmosis (RO) and ultraviolet light advanced oxidation (UVAOP) for the purpose of reclaiming wastewater from the Long Beach Wastewater Plant for injection into the Alamitos Gap seawater intrusion barrier to protect and augment the inland fresh water supplies.
WRD needed to expand the facility to a product water capacity of 8 MGD. A unique challenge that the project faced was that the waste volume from the facility cannot be increased beyond 760,000 gallons per day (GPD) due to limited capacity in the sewer where the concentrate is discharged.
SPI developed a RO design incorporating a third stage concentrator to increase recovery and minimize RO concentrate. This design utilizes unique chemical feed and flush systems to maintain the high recovery operation.
Following construction, SPI was integral in developing the facility startup and commissioning plan and participated in performance and demonstration testing compliance monitoring. SPI also assisted with initial plant operations and training the facility operations staff.