Whistle While We Work!

I thought I would post more pictures of the project I have helped design and we're constructing right now:

The influent side(the side where the water goes into the system). The water goes into the two big tan colored tanks (the water is split in half between the two tanks).


The little white tank is a mixing tank. We put Urea (dried cow urine) and mix it with water to feed into the bigger tanks. Urea is an excellent source of nitrogen (like fertalizer) which is required for the bacteria that we will use to "eat" any oil that might be in the water.

This is a view of the inside of the first two tanks you saw above. That water has about 3,000 gallons of sludge from other waste water plants at our facility. By sludge I mean bacteria and human waste from our sewer plants..Surprisingly enough it doesnt smell that bad...still wouldnt want to take a swim in there.

This is the view from up on the walk way. There are 6 large tanks (you cant see the two tanks from above because they are to my left and right). Those big white tanks in the background hold methanol and condensate (similar to gasoline). Each one of those holds 2 million gallons! That means each tank is worth $8,000,000!:

Here is all of the electrical and control panels to run this plant:

Here is the main electrical panel. It will be fed with 460V, 3 phase power. That is some major power (your typical home is wired with 110V, your dryer and heater are probably 220V, just for reference). Anyways, I thought the cables behind my TV and stereo was complicated. Check out this mess! (Not really a mess, the electricians know exactly where ever connection goes..amazing!

These are air blowers, they will push air into two of the tanks to make lots of bubbles. These will be used on the middle 2 tanks, because the bacteria there require air to eat any oil or gas.

This is the end of the plant, called the effluent (where the water gets pumped out to the ocean. This picture is the opposite end of the first picture. The two tanks here are called Settling Tanks. Their purpose is to do nothing but be perfectly still. This will allow any solids to fall to the bottom and the clean water will come from the top. The water then flows into the little plastic tank and is pumped out to the ocean:

Those little blue things are the pumps that will pump the water to the ocean.

Here is the overall picture. The first picture in this post was from the right side. The last picture was from the left side.

I hope you liked the tour!