Eight years, zero unplanned downtime
The municipal wastewater treatment plant in Port Washington, Wisconsin, is located on the picturesque shore of Lake Michigan, so it’s essential that their plant performs as designed.
Processing over 500 million gallons of wastewater yearly
“We have our beach, our marina, fishing, and we also take a lot of drinking water out of the lake,” says Dan Buehler, Superintendent of the City of Port Washington WWTP. “We take great pride in providing this service to the community and residents.”
Over 500 million gallons of wastewater is processed through this plant every year. Providing the air for the aeration tank is an Atlas Copco VSD+ screw blower that the facility has had for eight years. “It’s very critical that we have a blower that operates 24/7 without failure, and that is exactly what the Atlas Copco has provided,” Buehler explains. “When we researched blowers it was a long process. We were kind of leaning in the direction of getting a tri-lobe blower. Then I talked to another community and they were leaning toward new screw blower technology. The nice thing about screw blower technology is it’s very efficient from low speed to high speed, across the whole width of the curve.”
Wider operating range delivers energy savings
That wider operating range continues to deliver energy savings. John Conover, Low Pressure National Sales Manager for Atlas Copco, explains: “The screw fits best for the Port Washington application because it provides the range, efficiency and reliability that their process requires,” he said. “Our one new machine replaced the capacity of their two old machines, with a wider operating range than they were able to achieve before.”
The Atlas Copco VSD+ blower has now been in operation for more than 64,000 hours with zero unplanned downtime.