The Future of Sustainable Wastewater Treatment is Here

Conventional wastewater treatment plants are large, expensive and inefficient.   Treated water is often wasted through discharge to open waters or evaporation.   With the world facing a long-term crisis with access to usable drinking water, something has to change…and it has.  Wastewater treatment has been reborn!!!

Prometheus represents a revolution in wastewater treatment design, energy conservation & production.  The compact, zero waste design allows the system to be used virtually anywhere.  The simplicity of operation and minimized operator attention allows the system to be utilized in applications and locations which conventional treatment technologies cannot

This groundbreaking technology was born through a collaboration of Theia LLC, IMEX Consulting and Corncob Inc. and took its first step towards operational reality with its initial (and very successful) pilot test in Robbinsville, NJ in late April.  While the process is revolutionary, the system is a combination of innovative technologies which have been proven on their own.  This combination can be customized to fit the customer’s application, need, and budget.

Prometheus removes all solids, suspended and dissolved, in the front end of the system.  Clean water is discharged and can be directly discharged to surface, groundwater, or can be used for a variety of applications.   The plant itself requires a lot less energy than conventional treatment plants and requires a small fraction of the space.

Solids are dewatered on site using an EZ Sludge system and can be sent offsite, treated further on site to make class A biosolids, or can be digested on site to create methane gas and produce enough energy to take the system off the grid.   For communities like Robbinsville, the addition of this digestion system opens up the potential to accept septage as well as food waste like oil and grease as well as organic waste that would normally be sent to a landfill.

In April, the two primary components of the system, Corncob (solids removal) and EZ Sludge were operated for several days at one of Robbinsville’s pump stations taking wastewater in directly from the pump station and treating it.   The discharged water will likely be suitable for reuse, direct discharge or some combination pending permit submission surface water testing) –  while the solids were sent to the EZ sludge system and were dewatered.   Sludge was dewatered to 15-20% solids in the EZ sludge system with clear, clean water being recovered from the dewatered solids.

NEXT Step: Based on the promising results of the pilot test, a full-scale system for this location is being proposed and the process of filing for a permit is under way.   The full-scale system will include the two pieces that were tested (Membrane Filtration and solids dewatering) and will also likely include sludge digestion with energy production such that the facility will eventually be energy neutral.   Plans also include the ability to receive additional organic waste such as septage, oil and grease and possibly food wastes which are presently sent to the local landfill.