For more information about Resource Recovery, please send us an email message or contact us at:
King County Wastewater Treatment Division Resource Recovery 201 S. Jackson Street Mail Stop: KSC-NR-0512 Seattle, WA 98104 Phone: 206-684-1247 Fax: 206-684-2057
Nitrogen Removal Study at West Point and South Treatment Facilities
The Department of Ecology is looking at the possible connection between nutrients in Puget Sound and wastewater produced in our region. If nitrogen limits were implemented, how would this impact King County’s wastewater treatment processes and costs? A County Nitrogen Removal Study is evaluating representative treatment technologies for the South and West Point treatment plants using two potential regulatory scenarios for effluent nitrogen limits. Learn more about this and other Treatment Optimization projects.
Energy Recovery From Co-Digestion of Organics
King County already harnesses energy, in the form of methane-rich biogas from the solids treatment process. We are now looking at the possibility of importing other types of waste material that can readily be converted to biogas. While traditional solids treatment involves only anaerobic digestion of sewage solids (i.e., microbes consuming a single food source), co-digestion involves adding a second source of organics (e.g., food waste or restaurant grease) that the microbes in the digesters can convert to even more methane-rich biogas. Learn more.
Innovations in Combined Sewer Overflow Treatment
Combined Sewer Overflows, or CSOs, occur in older parts of Seattle during heavy rains when pipes designed to carry both sewage and stormwater fill to capacity and discharge directly into waterways. King County recently completed a study that evaluated two innovative treatment technologies with the potential to reduce the size and cost of future CSO treatment facilities currently identified in the County’s CSO Control Plan. Learn more.
A Water Utility: Recovering Resources in Wastewater
For more than 20 years, the Resource Recovery Work Group has been investigating new and innovative ways of recovering and reusing beneficial resources created during the wastewater treatment process.
For more information and study findings, visit our Research Library. The library contains project summaries with links to study reports.
Research and Technology
The Technology Assessment Program has been identifying and evaluating new technologies for more than 20 years. The program is focused on evaluation of technologies that can improve the performance or reduce the costs of wastewater treatment. This includes review of new (proposed) technologies, assessment of existing and new wastewater treatment processes, performing laboratory research and administering pilot studies or demonstration-scale equipment testing.
