5 Reasons Smart Water Utilities Need a Weather Station #2: ODOR CONTROL

Many facilities are located proximate to commercial and/or residential neighbors. Forward-thinking plant managers want to be good neighbors and take steps to reduce odor issues from the plant, whether chemical or sewage.

“Odors from wastewater treatment plants cause neighbors to complain,” says Raquel Rimbach in a Pollution Equipment News article. “These complaints can escalate, gaining traction with public officials and even the media, negatively impacting the plant’s reputation.”1

Factors such as temperature, precipitation, wind speed and direction contribute to odor intensity and drift. Monitoring and documenting these parameters can help when addressing neighborhood concerns and planning for odor control and mitigation.

For example, research shows a positive correlation of H2S concentrations with temperature as it facilitates the growth of microbes. An inverse correlation with precipitation can be owing to infiltration and inflow. Meteorological monitoring helps understand correlations with odor factor measurements and make sense of how the plume disperses.2

Los Angeles County Sanitation District utilizes weather stations from Columbia Weather Systems at their water reclamation facilities to help manage for odor, based on complaints from neighbors, as well as the possibility of chemical spills. Their Orion 420™ Weather Stations with (4-20 mA signal interface) integrate with their PLC systems which utilize FactoryTalk software.3

Automated weather monitoring provides time-stamped data for documentation and analysis when addressing complaints, as well as modeling and mitigation to prevent future odor issues.

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1Rimbach, Raquel. (2017, September). How to Control Odors at Wastewater Treatment Plants. Pollution Equipment News. Retrieved from https://www.pollutionequipmentnews.com/how-to-control-odors-at-wastewater-treatment-plants

2Halageri, Natasha, (2012). Odor Monitoring at Wastewater Treatment Plants. University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1580. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1580

3Columbia Weather Systems. (2016, June). "Easy to Install" Orion 420 at Whittier Narrows WRP. https://columbiaweather.com/news/archive/2016/easy-to-install-orion-420-whittier-narrows-wrp/