Business Divisions

Wastewater

NORAM’s Wastewater Division provides technologies and engineering services to clients in the industrial and municipal wastewater sectors.

Our Specialties

Small Footprint WWTPs: VERTREAT™

NORAM has substantially advanced the original ‘deep shaft’ concept for in-ground bioreactors, embodied in our third-generation VERTREAT™ technology. The VERTREAT™ process provides a small-footprint, low-energy aerobic biological process for treating effluents ranging in concentration from municipal to concentrated industrial wastewater streams. Efficient oxygen transfer and low power requirements reduce operating costs by 50% compared to conventional systems.

ECOfluid Systems Inc.

NORAM subsidiary company ECOfluid provides aerobic biological wastewater treatment solutions based on its proprietary Upflow Sludge Blanket Filtration (USBF®) technology, in addition to membrane bioreactor (MBR) processes, depending on the specifics of each application. The plants combine nitrification, denitrification, clarification and sludge stabilization in a single compact bioreactor, and are ideally suited for low cost, remote and off-grid applications. Since 1995, ECOfluid has executed over 150 projects in Canada, the USA and the Caribbean.

Oil Refinery and Petrochemical Wastewater Treatment

NORAM’s Wastewater Division has extensive experience designing and troubleshooting oil refinery and petrochemical wastewater plants, including nitrogen purged buffer tanks, DAF/DNF, aerobic biological treatment, and tertiary filtration and effluent polishing stages.

For difficult to treat petrochemical wastewater streams such as nitration wastewater, NORAM has undertaken several projects using thermolysis, or hydrothermal processing, to break down recalcitrant organic compounds, allowing subsequent treatment by biological means.

Engineering Services

In addition to our own technologies, the NORAM Wastewater Division provides a full suite of wastewater engineering design services, ranging from in-house bench-scale testing to full-scale plant detailed design and vendor equipment selection and procurement. According to the needs of specific projects, we have the unique capability to pair engineering studies with experimental programs at our in-house laboratory and pilot plant facility (BC Research Inc.).Our wastewater engineering services include:

• Laboratory testing
• Pilot plant design and testing programs
• Engineering and procurement (options studies, Design Basis, FEED, detailed design)
• Commissioning and start-up
• Design of temporary wastewater treatment systems
• Existing plant troubleshooting and optimization

We are experienced in utilizing as part of project delivery:

• Biowin® and Petwin® modelling
• CFD modelling
• Bentley AutoPLANT® 3D design
• ASME B31.3 piping design
• Caesar II stress analysis
• TEMA heat exchanger design
• API design codes

Our Projects

We have undertaken process engineering design and delivery of projects ranging from scouting options studies and process technology development to full scale wastewater treatment plants up to 50,000 m³/d capacity in the following applications:

• Oil refinery wastewater treatment
• Municipal wastewater treatment
• Food industry wastewater treatment
• Phosphorus recovery from municipal and agricultural wastewater
• Oil sands tailings treatment
• Pretreatment of brines and saline wastewater including produced water

The 2,500 m³/d VERTREAT™ plant at the Parkland (Burnaby, BC) oil refinery occupies only 700 m² (7,500 ft²). We have provided ongoing wastewater testing and operations advisory/engineering support services on a multi-year contract.

The 40,000 m³/day VERTREAT™ plant in Qingdao, China, is a biological nutrient removal (BNR) wastewater treatment facility in China, designed for removal of BOD, ammonia, and total nitrogen to low levels.

NORAM makes extensive use of Bentley AutoPLANT® 3D design during detailed design – an especially beneficial tool for brown-field retrofit projects, and industrial sites with high on-site fabrication costs.

NORAM provided the process engineering design for Ostara’s Pearl® struvite recovery cystallizer reactors, and provided ongoing process technology R&D support in a multi-year contract.

Dawson City is located in the Yukon in northern Canada. The DCWWTP VERTREAT™ system’s small footprint enabled full enclosure in a 1,000 m² (10,800 ft²) heated building located in the centre of town.

NORAM designs and supplies reactors for the hydrothermal processing of challenging compounds not amenable to biological treatment. The unit pictured breaks down nitro-phenols – which are bio-toxic – at a petrochemical plant in South Korea.