Water Reuse Project
Reuse of treated internal or external wastewaters in the
cooling systems of coal-based thermoelectric power plants
Water Re-use Project

Swanson School of Engineering CarnegieMellon
This study was conducted in order to assess the potential of three different impaired waters for the use in recirculating cooling water systems of thermoelectric power plants.

     • Secondary Treated Municipal Wastewater
     • Passively Treated Mine Drainage
     • Ash Pond Effluent

Lab scale and pilot scale studies were done on each of these impaired waters in order to evaluate their effect on scaling, corrosion, and biomass growth in a cooling tower.

Acknowledgements
This report is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory under Award Number DE-FC26-06NT42722. We are extremely grateful to Franklin Township Municipal Sanitary Authority (Murrysville, PA), and especially James Brucker and Gene Greco, for providing access to the FTMSA wastewater treatment facility for sampling and for pilot-scale field testing (the photograph of the FTMSA test site on the report cover is used with permission). We would also like to thank St. Vincent College (Norman Hipps and Angela Belli) for access to their AMD passive treatment system for sampling; Reliant Energy (Thomas Teitt and Stephanie Yauger) for access to the Cheswick Power Station ash sedimentation ponds for sampling; and Robert Hedin of Hedin Environmental for helpful discussions related to AMD and site selection. Additionally, we thank the following individuals for serving on our project advisory board: Richard Aull (Brentwood Industries), John Holsapple (Energy and Environment Alliance of New York), Kareen Milcic (PA DEP), Richard Miller (Baltimore Air Coil), William Skalitzky (Alliant Energy), Alan Tennant (Allegheny Energy), David Velegol (Chester Engineers), Stephanie Yauger (Reliant Energy). We are also grateful to our industrial partners: Brentwood Industries (Reading, PA), Kroff Chemical Company (Pittsburgh, PA), Crown Solutions (Vandalia, OH) for their assistance with various aspects of this project.
Civil and Environmental Engineering | University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 | 412-624-9870
Civil and Environmental Engineering | Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 | 412-268-2940