Nixon-Kocher Drinking Water Treatment Plant Design

Overview

Our team was presented with the goal of designing a new drinking water treatment plant to serve the Nixon and Kocher well fields. This plant would serve the State College area and provide groundwater treatment. Our team had to account for the design of the unit operations of the plant as well as the flood risk of the project site assigned. We faced unique challenges such as engineering each individual step of the treatment process and accounting for future flood zones created by climate change.

Objectives

Our objective was to begin broadly and assess the project site of the plant and feasible technologies for treatment. Then we narrowed the focus and created a preliminary design that we finetuned to create a final design to address the needs of the State College Borough Water Authority.

Approach

Gather information about modern drinking water treatment technology

Decision matrix to compare relevant technologies

Select specific treatment models to implement from relevant companies

Feature sustainability features to reduce the environmental impact of the plant

Model flood zones based on design storms and climate change models

Analyzed flood zones for different potential simulations

Mapped flood zones to decide where to place the building on site

Generated a result of treatment train steps and where to put them on site

Concluded the effectiveness and the flood risk of our final design to be satisfactory

Outcomes

The area will be provided with potable drinking water from this plant

The project site will not be at risk for flooding and will be built outside the flood zone

The treatment plant will be sustainable and have many green features

The treatment steps will accommodate for future growth in demand and can scale to larger sizes on the same building footprint