Emerging technologies and approaches to minimize discharges into Lake Michigan, phase 2 module 4 report.

The Great Lakes Initiative (GLI) established the new water quality-based discharge criteria for mercury (Hg), thereby increasing the need for many municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants in the region to lower the mercury in their effluents. Information on deployable technologies to satisfy these requirements for industrial and municipal dischargers in the Great lakes region is scarce. Therefore, BP funded Purdue University Calumet and Argonne to identify deployable Hg removal technologies to meet the GLI discharge criterion at its Whiting Refinery in Indiana. The joint PUC/Argonne project was divided into 2 phases. Results from Phase I and Phase II Modules 1-3 have been previously reported. This report summarizes the work done in Phase 3 Module 4, which consisted of the pilot scale testing of Hg removal technologies previously selected in Module 3. The pilot testing was an Argonne/PUC jointly directed project that was hosted at and funded by the BP refinery in Whiting, IN. As two organizations were involved in data analysis and interpretation, this report combines two independent sets of evaluations of the testing that was done, prepared respectively by Argonne and Purdue. Each organization retains sole responsibility for its respective analysis conclusions and recommendations. Based on Module 3 bench testing with pre-Effluent To Lake (pre-ETL) and clarifier effluent (CE) samples from the Whiting refinery, three different technologies were chosen for pilot testing: (1) Ultrafiltration (using GE ZeeWeed(reg sign) Technology, 0.04 {mu}m pore size and made up of PVDF) for particulate mercury removal; (2) Adsorption using Mersorb(reg sign) LW, a sulfur-impregnated activated carbon, for dissolved mercury removal if present and (3) The Blue PRO(reg sign) reactive filtration process for both particulate and dissolved (if present) mercury removal. The ultrafiltration and the Blue PRO(reg sign) reactive filtration pilot studies were done simultaneously at the BP Whiting refinery using a slipstream of wastewater taken just prior to the Effluent to lake (pre-ETL) outfall. It was the intention of this pilot testing to demonstrate proof of concept, i.e. can the discharge limits obtained at bench scale be consistently met at the pilot scale. Although Mersorb(reg sign) LW was selected for dissolved mercury removal testing, this technology was not pilot tested because of a lack of dissolved mercury in the test wastewater during the pilot study. The overall objective of this pilot testing was to demonstrate the effectiveness of the tested technologies with continuous and varying feed conditions to meet the GLI criterion (1.3 ppt). Optimization for full-scale design was outside of the scope of this work. In addition to demonstrating whether the Hg criterion can be met, information on residue generation rate, frequency of backwashing and other maintenance issues were collected to better understand the implications for a full-scale system