Buckman Water Reclamation Facility Biosolids Conversion

The Buckman Water Reclamation Facility (WRF), located in Jacksonville, Florida, is the largest WRF owned by Florida’s largest municipal utility, JEA. As such, it is a critical part of Northeast Florida’s wastewater infrastructure. The facility has been in operation since 1958, and the majority of the mechanical equipment, as well as the building, have reached the end of their useful life and require replacement. To proactively address the facility’s aging infrastructure, JEA first performed a Biosolids Management Study to develop a plan for improving JEA’s biosolids management system over a 20-year period. Based on this study, JEA then launched the Buckman Biosolids Conversion Projects, which aim to enhance the reliability of the facility, expand its capacity, and support future customer growth.

JEA selected Carollo Engineers to design the new biosolids processing facility as part of this larger effort. Carollo completed the design of this new multistory facility, which will house new thickening, dewatering, and thermal drying systems suitable for treating 260 wet tons/day capacity.

The new facility includes a 190-foot-wide, 262-foot-long, and 80-foot-tall concrete masonry unit block building with concrete beams and columns to house all the necessary components. The facility combines the thickening and dewatering processes with thermal drying facilities under one roof, to provide a facility that is easy to operate and maintain while also providing reliability and redundancy. The facility includes five new gravity belt thickeners, four dewatering centrifuges, new polymer storage and feed equipment, dewatered cake conveying equipment, dual thermal drum drying facilities, a new 2-million-gallon raw sludge holding tank, sixteen sludge screens, a satellite cake receiving station, cake dilution tanks, and digester feed pumps. The integrated layout simplifies operations and maintenance while providing the reliability and redundancy needed for continuous facility operation. The entire design of the facilities was completed using the REVIT^® Building Intelligent Model to provide discipline coordination and eliminate conflicts. This approach also provided an open floor space that will make operations and maintenance activities significantly easier.

The project streamlines operations and maintenance for ease of solids handling and reduces volume and Class A solids by adding a thermal drying process. These improvements reduce the costs and risks associated with biosolids disposal, providing longevity to the solids systems so that they can serve generations of Floridians to come.