Each year the WEFTEC Program Committee selects the highest-rated abstract in the Municipal Track to receive the Martha Hahn Memorial Recognition. This award recognizes those who advance knowledge, the dissemination of information, and continual experimentation and growth.
For 2018, this award went to the presentation, "Full Scale and Demonstration-Scale Primary Filtration Projects Show Great Promise." In this 32-minute video, Onder Caliskaner, vice president at Kennedy Jenks, delivers the full presentation. The presentation authors, in addition to Caliskaner are George Tchobanoglous, Ryan Young, Zoe Wu, Catrina Paez, Brian Davis, Bruce Mansell, Philip Ackman, Terry Reid, and John Dyson.
This presentation focuses on primary filtration (PF) as an advanced primary treatment technology that can be used to replace primary sedimentation. From the abstract:
“PF can produce significant energy and capital cost savings possible via carbon diversion as compared to conventional primary sedimentation, resulting in:
- Decreased electrical energy required for aeration in secondary treatment because of reduced organic loading,
- Increased gas energy production in the anaerobic digestion process resulting from the high organic energy content of the volatile suspended solids (VSS) removed by PF,
- Expanded plant capacity by reducing the organic loading upstream of the secondary process,
- Reduction of footprint required for primary treatment by approximately 75%, and
- Enhanced particle size characteristics of the wastewater to be treated biologically, increasing the effectiveness of secondary treatment.”
This presentation was offered at WEFTEC 2018 as part of Technical Session No. 203: To Sieve or Not To Sieve: That Is the Primary (Treatment) Question.
2019 Recognition Recipient
For this year, the Program Committee has chosen the abstract, “Diagnosis of Long-Term Fouling Mechanisms in Full-Scale Membrane Bioreactor,” to receive the 2019 Martha Hahn Memorial Recognition. This work will be presented by Avery Carlson from the University of Michigan during Technical Session No. 305, A Flexible Solution: Membranes for a Variety of Advanced Wastewater Treatment Applications.
