H2Owls Engineering
Abstract
The City of West Melbourne, Florida, will construct a 3 million gallon per day reverse osmosis (RO) water treatment plant (WTP). The City currently buys its water from the neighboring City of Melbourne, at a price of approximately $3.1 million annually. As a community of over 23,000 residents, West Melbourne wishes to become more self-sufficient and sustainable to support the growing population. Florida sits on top of one of the most productive aquifers in the world, where Florida’s drinking water is taken. RO is a type of water treatment that can easily take advantage of Florida’s specific geology, making it a common water treatment process in Florida. RO purifies water by forcing the water through microscopic pores in a mesh-like material, separating constituents from the water. RO does produce a waste byproduct during the treatment process. However, thanks to Florida’s geology, it can be safely and sustainably disposed of by being injected back into the ground, to a different location than where the water is drawn from. Because the waste byproduct only contains constitutes that were originally taken from the ground itself, the byproduct is naturally recycled back through the environment. The H2Owls Engineering team has designed a WTP that will produce a high-quality drinking water for the city and meet all current and future drinking water demands. The facility is also designed to withstand a Category V hurricane, allow for the expansion of the water production capacity in the future, and is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certified, which means it has met a high standard for environmental sustainability.
