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The Regional Waste Water Treatment Plant serves the City of Fond du Lac, several townships' sanitary districts, & the Village of North Fond du Lac. It was recently remodeled to expand capacity and improve energy efficiency.
Waste water (from toilets, showers, laundry, dishwashers...) is gradually purified as it works its way through the mostly gravity-fed system. |
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This skimmer arm removes solids from a clarifier tank. Solids also collect at the bottom of the tank where they are sent to the digester process. |
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These digesters collect methane from biosolids and fuel water treatment boilers. |
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Currently, the treatment plant generates more methane than it can use for treatment boilers and the excess is burned. There are future plans to capture this energy and use it for more of the treatment plant's operations. |
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This is a heat exchanger used in the sludge treatment process. After "cooking" in the digester and releasing methane, the sludge is cooled to move through the rest of the system. |
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This is a picture of the centrifuges used in the sludge dewatering process. A centrifuge works much like the spin cycle in a washing machine. |
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After being spun in the centrifuges, the sludge drops into the truck for land spreading on fields. As with manure, there are still valuable nutrients available for crops in this water treatment byproduct. |
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Sludge looks similar to dirt or compost. There is only a little left in the bottom of this truck. |
