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Kevin Shafer. Image courtesy of MMSD.[/caption]
A new
$13 million research lab, to be built at the
Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District’s South Shore facility in Oak Creek, will give water technology companies the necessary space to pilot their water treatment innovations.
The 5,000-square-foot lab is being supported with a $3.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The remaining funding will be sourced through MMSD’s capital program.
MMSD hopes to begin construction on the lab at some point next year and finish by early 2026.
Anaheim, California-based
Tomorrow Water and Loves Park, Illinois-based
Aqua Aerobics will be the first companies to occupy the research lab. Both companies are focused on primary wastewater treatment.
In a recent interview with BizTimes,
Kevin Shafer, executive director of MMSD, shared what the organization hopes to do with the technology being piloted by these two companies.
What’s driving the need for this new lab space?
"At our South Shore facility, we were going through some preliminary design aimed at improving the primary clarification process that's used to treat wastewater. As we were looking at it, we started seeing some new technologies that were (being used) mostly overseas. South Korea is the main place where these technologies are being implemented at scale. We started looking at this technology, and it made sense for us to implement something similar at South Shore. We decided we needed to pilot (two new technologies) to see which one fits our needs the best. We were going through that design work and developing the facility where we wanted to test these new technologies, and it became apparent that we'd have to construct a new building. We thought instead of having just a temporary structure, why not just make it permanent?"
Why does MMSD need to upgrade its technology?
“South Shore came online in 1965, so we need to upgrade some of the systems. We’re always looking to find something that’s more efficient, lower cost, more climate resilient moving forward, and this technology, we're hoping, will do that for us.”
Are weather trends further driving the need for this new technology?
“We've had a lot of heavy rain in the Milwaukee region since January 1. We had one combined sewer overflow in early March. Through all that rain in April, May and June, we did not have an overflow. We've been able to handle the rainfall this year, but we know that, based on the models we're seeing, those numbers are just going to keep going up for annual rainfall amounts. We need to make sure that we stay ahead of that as much as we can.”
How many companies will eventually occupy space in the lab?
"Some of it will depend on the technologies that we're testing. Some companies might need a bigger footprint than others. These two companies will be the initial inhabitants of the space and once we determine how we want to move forward there, we will open the facility to other types of research as well. We've done a lot of testing in the past, and it's just not to the scale that you need to prove some technologies. This facility that we're building will allow us to test newer technologies on a pretty big scale.”
Which companies will be the first to work in the lab?
"Primary filtration is an emerging technology for primary wastewater treatment. This technology is not currently installed at any wastewater treatment plant in the United States at the scale required at the South Shore Water Reclamation Facility. Currently, there are two different and viable primary filtration technologies from two different suppliers: Proteus by Tomorrow Water and AquaPrime by Aqua Aerobics. While they are both primary filtration technologies, they perform the filtering in very different ways. Because of the innovative nature of this technology and the significant costs to implement the technology at SSWRF, district staff recommend conducting a large-scale pilot test of the primary filtration technology. Such a pilot test would provide performance data representative of a full-scale primary filtration system at SSWRF and help identify operational and maintenance needs and costs. The pilot test results will aid MMSD staff in making the final decision to move forward with the primary filtration technology and will determine if both the Proteus and AquaPrime systems are viable for SSWRF. Staff currently anticipates a two-year long pilot test."
What’s the end goal for creating this new lab?
"To increase the exposure of these new technologies to the industries that would help them with their commercialization. We've got wonderful partners here in the Milwaukee area that are represented by The Water Council, so there will be a lot of partnerships with the companies that make up The Water Council...giving them a local footprint where they can test out some of their research. This lab will be just one more brick in building a water technology hub in the Milwaukee area.”
