The yarra Valley process optimisation program - working at an operational level saves money and improves effluent quality across wastewater treatment plants

Yarra Valley Water provides water and wastewater services for approximately 1.5 million customers on the north eastern fringes of the greater Melbourne metropolitan area.

Over the past two years AWT Water and Yarra Valley Water have been working through an efficiency program to both improve the performance of existing treatment plants as well as set and maintain a benchmark for their future operations.

Efficiency studies have consisted of specialist online characterisation work and the development of BioWin process simulation models for the initial evaluation, and then optimisation of several high rate treatment plants owned and operated by YVW. Plants include; Healesville, Brushy Creek, Lilydale, Whittlesea and Upper Yarra (by others).

Recommended alterations have largely been completed at Healesville with particular success. Yarra Valley Water are now in the process of evaluation works programming for the other plants completed to date.

This paper focuses on Yarra Valley Waters’ reasons for the efficiency study program, the methodology used to undertake these investigations, including some of the difficulties the project team came across and the results of the changes from the process model outputs.