Buchart-Horn Wins Excellence Award

Buchart-Horn presentation board highlights the winning project.

The American Consulting Engineers Council (ACEC) recognized The City of Baltimore's Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant during a national competition for outstanding engineering designs.

ACEC selected the Back River biological nutrient removal (BNR) facility for an Honor Award during the organization's Engineering Excellence Awards Program on May 5th in Hawaii.

The new $92 million biological nutrient removal (BNR) system known as Back River BNR Plant #3 is eliminating more than 6 million pounds of nitrogen and more than 1.4 million pounds of phosphorous from the Chesapeake Bay every year. Designed by Buchart-Horn, Inc. (BH), the new Plant #3 processes 98 million gallons per day (MGD), more than half of the total 180 MGD through the Back River facility.

"This project is of immense benefit to the Chesapeake Bay," said Raymond M. Best, P.E., P.L.S., President of BH. "Public Works Director George Balog and The City of Baltimore should be recognized for their environmental leadership."

"Improvements in that operation set the standard for additional nutrient-removal upgrades at smaller plants throughout the Chesapeake Bay Watershed."

The facility has been repeatedly visited by officials from authorities and local governments that operate wastewater treatment units in the region.

While the project was aimed at nitrogen removal, the selected biological process also removes phosphorous. Previously, phosphorus removal relied upon the use of ferric chloride -- so the design also creates reductions in chemical costs and further lowers the cost of sludge disposal.

The BH design added a 23,000 square-foot blower building housing five 1,500 hp blowers, along with six reactors, twelve clarifiers and two 98 MGD sludge pumping stations to the 466-acre Back River complex east of the City near Essex, Maryland.

The new Plant #3, which utilizes the Modified Ludzack-Ettinger process, reduces sludge generation and thus significantly trims disposal costs. The sludge reduction results from additional consumption during longer detention periods in wastewater processing.

In addition, electrical power consumption per gallon decreased by twenty percent because the BNR process requires one fifth less air than the previously-used activated sludge process.

The 98 MGD BNR treatment train at Back River has been successfully operating beyond its design capacity in order to accommodate additional wastewater that has been diverted from another on-site treatment train that is also being converted to remove nitrogen. By April of 1998, all three treatment trains at Back River will have been upgraded to remove nitrogen and phosphorous from the wastewater.