Reuse / Recycle
Aqua-Aerobic Systems, Inc. > Orange County South Water Reclamation Facility (North Plant)
Orlando, FL
Orange County South Water Reclamation Facility (North Plant) in Orlando, Florida is one of three plants servicing unincorporated Orange County and the cities of Belle Isle and Edgewood.
All the treated wastewater from the County's three facilities is reclaimed and is dedicated to many uses: to irrigate citrus groves and golf courses, create wetlands for endangered species, recharge the freshwater Aquifer, and to provide cooling water to Orlando Utility Commission's Stanton Energy Center.
Orange County SWRF began its operation in 1957 with a 1.0 MGD trickling filter treatment system and it has experienced several expansions and upgrades since in order to accommodate the community's growth and increasingly stringent effluent requirements. The upgrades included the addition of an extended aeration process, sludge processing systems, more aeration tanks, a three-pass, modified step-feed process and four large clarifies with return activated sludge systems. In October 2003, (3) of the plant's existing traveling bridge sand filter basins, supplied by another manufacturer, were retrofitted using (8) 12-disk package steel Aqua-Disk® cloth media filters. The filters provided a 60% increase in average hydraulic capacity on the basis of flow per square foot of filtration area. The cloth media filters precede chlorine contact tanks in the plant's treatment scheme.