Oak Ridge National Laboratory Nonradiological Wastewater Treatment Plant optimization report.

摘要

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is operated by Marietta Energy Systems, Inc. for the United States Department of Energy (DOE). For many years, non-radiological process wastewater streams which mainly consist of once-through cooling water underwent little or no treatment and were discharged directly to White Oak Creek (WOC). However, since the non-radiological process waste streams could potentially contain small quantities of organic and heavy metal pollutants, it was determined by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Tennessee Department of Health and Environment (TDHE) that the discharge of many of the process waste streams into WOC was not in compliance with state and federal environmental regulations. The Non-radiological Wastewater Treatment Project (NRWTP) was conceived as a means of collecting and treating non-radiological process wastewaters from a variety of outfalls and complying with the Clean Water Act's National Pollutant discharge elimination system (NPDES) regulations. The facility has operated under a one year evaluation period as specified in the NPDES permit. During the evaluation period, operation of the plant has been monitored and adjusted to optimize treatment performance. This report is intended to provide documentation of efforts to evaluate and optimize NRWTP performance and present the results obtained for submittal to the TDHE and EPA. 5 refs., 5 figs., 22 tabs.