Challenge

A statewide drought prompted the NJDEP commissioner to announce mandatory water use restrictions.  This meant that all New Jersey companies using more than 100,000 gallons of water per day had to submit a water conservation contingency plan to the NJDEP.

PSEG Power of Newark, N.J. responded by forming a drought emergency response team that developed water conservation plans for each of its generating plants.  They wanted to increase the water reuse capacity of the Bergen Station plant and also design a system that would treat reclaimed water and make it pure enough to feed the station's boilers.

Solution

Siemens Water Technologies worked with PSEG Power's drought emergency response team to design a system that would extend the Bergen Station's pioneering use of recycled treated wastewater for plant cooling and would totally eliminate the plant's use of any municipal drinking water for power production.

For Bergen 2, PSEG Power's second repowering project, the plant installed additional Hydro-Clear® filters to treat secondary sewage and reuse it as cooling tower make-up water.

Within 90 days after PSEG Power's drought emergency team first met with Siemens, the team designed, approved, tested, and started up a new boiler feedwater treatment system at Bergen Station.  The system includes three mobile trailers from Siemens that are part of a five-year build-own-operate contract.

Results

The installation of additional Hydro-Clear filters resulted in a total reuse capacity of up to 10,000 GPM or 14.4 million GPD. By using recycled, treated wastewater for cooling tower makeup, in conjunction with closed loop cooling systems, the plant saves approximately 10 million gallons of city water per month.

When Bergen Station's two combined-cycle generating units are operating, the mobile water treatment system saves an additional 400 GPM of city water.

In November 2002, PSEG won a NJDEP environmental excellence award, innovative technology category, for the reverse osmosis system installed at Bergen Station in response to the state's drought emergency. PSEG was so pleased with the performance of the Hydro-Clear filters that they were added to the treatment plant at the Linden Generating Station.