Reclaimed water gets new life
At the Gold Bar plant, back in Edmonton, wastewater is put through a stringent purification process once solids and nutrients have been separated out. Treated water is returned to the North Saskatchewan River. Also worth noting is that EPCOR supplies a portion of the treated water to Suncor for its Edmonton-area operations, which means it does not have to draw water from the North Saskatchewan River. Even before all that happens, however, there are invisible sources of energy and power to be reclaimed. There is the liquid and the solid, but also the gas and the heat. Wastewater is very high in energy, not just because it’s coming from the human body but because it is emanating from controlled climate locations (namely, bathrooms, sinks, showers and drains). Energy is energy and there is no reason not to put it to use. The energy is not yet extracted from the treated water that returns to the river, says Saif Molla. “But when we do it’ll just be another piece in the circular economy puzzle. We are doing a lot but there is still so much potential.”
What is extracted is the biogas produced during the treatment process. “Biogas is a very useful resource,” says Molla. “There’s a significant methane concentration in it, which is natural gas, essentially.” That methane is used to feed boilers that heat the buildings, the boilers and the digesters at Gold Bar, which means some of the energy contained in wastewater, once separated, is turned right around and used to treat and purify the new wastewater coming in.
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