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Developing a Composting Facility with Odor Control
Developing a Composting Facility with Odor Control
Ben Loveday, Director of Solid Waste, Spotsylvania County, VA
Todd Williams, P.E., BCEE, Residuals Resource Recovery Technology Leader, CH2M Hill
Thinking of adding bio-solids to your composting operation? See how Spotsylvania County dealt with potential odor concerns. This eSession will examine the development and construction of the Excellence Award-winning Spotsylvania County Livingston Composting Facility. This facility was built to handle brush from the landfill and convenience center, while also solving the problem of handling wastewater residuals.
The County embarked upon a compost facility expansion program in 2006 with three main goals.
- To manage the ever increasing quantities of residuals cake generated from both County wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) over the next 20 years
- To enhance and automate the compost process performance
- To accomplish this expansion with no offsite odor impacts
Spotsylvania County engaged CH2M HILL to assist in evaluating technical options available and to analyze the odor impact of expanding the facility. Through growth projection analysis, it was determined that the expanded composting facility should be initially sized for 80 tons per day of dewatered solids on a 7 day basis, roughly three times the size of the original facility, with the capability to double in capacity to 160 tons per day in the future.
The eSession will examine the process by which technology options were weighed, the advantages and disadvantages considered, and tours of operating systems similar in design were organized. One major part of the process that will be discussed is the odor sampling that was performed on the original composting facility in 2006. By modifying aeration regimes to mimic a full scale negative aeration process, data was collected that could be used to perform odor dispersion modeling that compared the impact of the planned expansion to the original operation.
This analysis showed that with a covered only (not fully enclosed) facility, and treatment through biofiltration, the offsite odor impact of the expanded facility would be no more than from the original facility. In fact, designing and building a covered only facility instead of a totally enclosed facility actually reduced the projected odor impact on adjacent property owners and saved approximately $3 million in capital costs. In the end, construction of the new facility cost $15.5 million.
The webinar will also touch on how the County has successfully marketed their compost under the trade name Livingston Blend, thereby reducing overall O&M costs by about 30% through revenues.
This eSession will provide the participant a strong understanding of the key factors that must be considered in successfully planning, designing and operating a biosolids composting facility with proper process and odor management controls in order to be a good neighbor.
For registrations or more information, please click here.