This training will be in partnership with our sponsor organization Black and Veatch held at their Meridian office. It will be split into three presentations:

• Sludge Densification presented by Issac Avila

• Digital Water Transformation & The Power of Predictive Digital Insights for your Plant and Staff presented by Carolyn Coffee

• Designing Pilots that Deliver: Lessons from Nanobubble Trials

CEU’s will be provided for this event. There are 45 seats available for this training opportunity. To reserve your seat, email swiosadm@gmail.com with your name and organization referencing this training by July 28th.

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Sludge Densification

Presented by: Issac Avila

Time: 1 hr

Description: As utilities face increasing regulatory pressure and growth within constrained infrastructure, treating more with the same infrastructure has become a critical operational challenge. This presentation introduces sludge densification as a practical strategy for intensifying treatment performance without capital expansion. Using full-scale case studies and field data, the session frames densification as a continuum, from conventional floc to fully developed aerobic granules, and highlights a nurture vs nature approach can intentionally shift sludge characteristics to improve settleability and solids retention.

Operators will learn how key process levers such as selector configuration, F:M control, solids retention time management, plug-flow behavior, and physical selection influence sludge structure and settling behavior. The session also explores how densified and granular sludge can create favorable microenvironments that support biological nutrient removal. Emphasis is placed on actionable lessons, common pitfalls, and full-scale observations that operators can apply to enhance process stability, maximize capacity, and improve overall plant performance.

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Digital Water Transformation & The Power of Predictive Digital Insights for your Plant and Staff

Presented by: Carolyn Coffee

Time: 1 Hr

Description: As regulatory pressures and environmental stewardship drive new nitrogen

regulations along the west coast of North America, water resource recovery facilities are adding new nutrient removal and recovery processes that can require intensive operator attention and costly inputs. When leveraged effectively, modeling tools can provide plant staff with insights and forecasts which enable them to switch from reactive operations (responding to process upsets or effluent changes) towards a proactive approach which optimizes, and controls processes inside of tighter bounds through the power of real-time prediction.

The Fond du Lac Wastewater Treatment & Resource Recovery Facility (Fond du Lac, WI) is a smaller utility (~60,000 PPE) facing an effluent limit of 0.19 mg/L total phosphorus. To achieve this without incurring significant construction or operational costs, the facility collaborated with Black & Veatch to design, train, and deploy a hybrid model. The hybrid model couples a machine learning model that forecasts primary effluent flows and loads with a mechanistic process model capable of predicting final effluent quality and process performance. The result produced carbon and ferric chloride dosing recommendations that allowed Fond du Lac to achieve consistently low effluent TP concentrations (≤0.19 mg/L) without the use of tertiary filters.

This presentation will discuss the approach, lessons learned, and best practices of a digital twin that complimented operational decision making to improve phosphorus removal performance. This tool was built with the intent of maximizing function while minimizing effort and complexity. The hybrid model operates behind a simple web-based interface and updates at the frequency operations staff update process data. The simplicity of this interface is one of the keys to successful implementation of digital water at Fond du Lac.

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Designing Pilots That Deliver: Lessons from Nanobubble Trials

Presented by: Becca Chapa

Time: 1 Hr

Description: Nanobubble (NB) technology is being evaluated widely for objectives ranging from foam control to improved nitrifier health, aeration efficiency, and process stability. However, reported outcomes vary widely by facility, highlighting the need for effective trials to confirm the effect of nanobubbles on various treatment units. This paper presents a practical, defensible framework for designing nanobubble demonstrations that generate statistically meaningful, actionable results. Lessons are drawn from two prior full-scale, demonstrations and a 12month study currently underway in Washington State.

LOTT Clean Water Alliance initiated this study to evaluate whether nanobubble augmentation can further improve the performance of an already well-operated WRRF. Objectives include enhanced energy efficiency, sustainability, cost control, and biological stability, particularly during periodic receipt of septage-type flows. Rather than technology evaluation, this presentation focuses on how experimental design can determine whether trial outcomes are conclusive or ambiguous. Key considerations include well-defined mechanisms of action, careful selection of normalized performance metrics and statistical tests, and experimental controls that isolate nanobubble effects from seasonal and operational variability. The LOTT study was designed to address common pitfalls observed in earlier trials. For example, aeration efficiency metrics were normalized to SRT and MLSS to control for seasonal and operational variability, and energy usage, which is dependent on pump curves and equipment fatigue, was replaced with an airflow metric.

This presentation also compares two previous demonstrations, one conclusive trial from South Carolina, and one from Wisconsin which is challenging to interpret. It covers lessons learned, such as selecting sampling points downstream of confounding recycle flows, using on/off testing to augment year-over-year comparisons, and how to develop clear evaluation criteria for technologies (like NBs) that affect multiple plant processes. Generalizable best practices for designing technology trials will be discussed, and we will review which claimed benefits of nanobubble technology were clearly demonstrated in these two demos, and which may require more evidence. Beyond nanobubbles, this work offers a transferable model for evaluating emerging technologies. As utilities in the mountain west face increasing regulatory pressure and limited capital, rigorous pilot and demonstration design is essential for making confident, data-driven decisions.