Date
Monday, September 9, 2024
Time
11:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location Name
KICC M105/106 (Level 1)
Name
Ensuring Plant Water Resiliency: How the Franklin WRF System Evolved to Ensure Reliability
Track
Sustainability
Description

The Franklin Water Reclamation Facility (WRF) is one of the leading water reclamation facilities in the State of Tennessee from a sustainability focus. One of the primary goals of the WRF operations staff is to utilize as much of their treated effluent to supply both the City’s robust reuse water system as well as the direct plant water demands, reducing the need for potable water throughout Franklin’s system. When the WRF was expanded in 2023, an expanded liquids treatment train and a state-of-the-art biosolids treatment facility significantly increased the on-site plant water demand. In addition to the on-site water needs, the city-wide reuse water system is projected to nearly double in demand over the next 20 years. The existing reuse and plant water pumps were unable to meet the current and future demands and the recently completed WRF expansion included the addition of larger reuse pumps at the WRF to provide both reuse and plant water simultaneously with one system. Ultimately, the existing separate plant water pumps were abandoned. Unfortunately, once the new reuse pumps were put into service, a temporary loss of water available to the pumps occurred, primarily due to a malfunction in the float controls. This supply interruption required multiple pumps to be removed for maintenance, leaving the WRF with a reduced capacity for reuse and plant water. Following this incident, the City became concerned about the lack of redundancy in the plant water system as any downtime in the reuse system left them without on-site plant water for use. As part of a follow-up project to rehabilitate and provide resiliency to multiple portions of the WRF, Franklin engaged CDM Smith to re-design a dedicated plant water pump station. This presentation will highlight both the past systems and proposed system as well as summarize the selection and design of the new plant water pumps at the Franklin WRF. It will also discuss the challenges of retrofitting larger pumps into the space where the previous abandoned pumps were installed. We will also discuss the long-term interaction and redundancy provided by the parallel pumped systems, ensuring long-term sustainable use of treated water for all plant water needs coupled with the growing demands of the largest reuse water system in the State of Tennessee.