BLACKSBURG, Va., March 12, 2002 A compact unit designed to treat wastewater in remote locations, such as the countryside of Afghanistan, will receive a trial run at a local pump station in June. The unit was designed as part of a half million dollar Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project awarded to UDT Inc. of Manassas, Va., and Virginia Tech by the U. S. Army. Virginia Tech serves as the academic partner for this project.

The compact unit is designed so that it can be delivered to a site by helicopter for rapid response and then hooked up to outhouses, kitchens, or wherever people are creating wastewater.

Virginia Techs Environmental Engineering Laboratory has tested the units ability to remove sludge from water. Once the new compact unit has demonstrated its capabilities in this field test, UTD will begin distributing it to the Army and then plans to sell it commercially, says company president John Hill.

Historically, biological treatment units and settling basins have needed long detention times to treat wastewater. This method is not feasible for remote locations. As an alternative, UTD and the Virginia Tech environmental engineering researchers, John Novak and Nancy Love, first experimented with using a fabric filter to remove wastewater solids. However, the fabric filter was too thick and would have required too large a unit and complicated emission controls to burn the filters.

Instead, Virginia Tech and UTD developed stainless steel screens and pressure filters for solids removal. These will be used in conjunction with biological treatment units where bacteria are used to degrade the waste using a fixed media comprised of clay beads. Bacteria are grown on the beads, which allows a high quantity of microbes to get into small spaces. Combining the stainless steel screens and the clay beads results in a compact treatment unit that can treat 30,000 gallons per day of wastewater.

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Contact: John T. Novak
jtnov@vt.edu
540-231-6132
Virginia Tech
13-Mar-2002

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