Lessons Learned in Three Years of Membrane Plant Operation

The City of Bozeman put a 22 MGD microfiltration plant online in March of 2014. Over the course of the last three years of operation, several lessons have been learned. It was a large change from the previous direct filtration multimedia plant that had minimal automation. The presentation will highlight several of the important lessons the City of Bozeman WTP operators learned and how future membrane plants in Montana can learn from our experience. Operators at the City of Bozeman had to learn to trust the automation. It is no longer necessary to manually adjust chemicals whenever flows are changed. The SCADA system takes care of all dosing and flow pacing for the operators. They way operations were done in the old plant were no longer relevant for the new plant. The amount of maintenance and lab work increased greatly. The monthly Clean-in-place procedures had to be learned and perfected to get the longest life possible out of the membranes. The operations became more hands off, but that doesn?t mean the plant runs itself. Operators still have to actively monitor the processes to ensure the plant runs at an optimal level. The amount of required data collection increased greatly and this data helps operators optimize plant processes. One of the most important lessons learned from three years of operation is that operators need to be trained differently. One month of training was no longer enough to give an operator enough knowledge to be comfortable. Operators had to become competent in membrane operations, data management systems, SCADA, and overall plant operations. This process takes at least three months to make a new operator competent enough to run the plant by themselves. Experienced operators learning how to run a membrane plant take a bit less time to become competent due to their background knowledge. The lessons we learned will help other plant operators in the operations of their plants. While each plant has its own requirements, the basics are fairly universal among all microfiltration plants.

This presentation is available to AMTA Members only.