by Will Thies, PE
It was the summer of 2016, and I was fresh out of college. Various learning opportunities inside the classroom and in developing countries had strengthened my interest in tackling water-related challenges, particularly water resources, distribution, and management. I had just been hired by Prein&Newhof to work as a General Municipal Engineer, and I was looking forward to applying some of what I had learned.
Shortly before beginning my work, I took a tour of the North Kent Sewer Authority’s PARCC Side Clean Water Plant with some other young engineers from Prein&Newhof. I had toured a couple of water and wastewater treatment plants before, but this was different. I was put face to face with tanks full of hundreds of thousands of membrane filters, pipes labeled “permeate” (something I had never heard of), buildings designed to look like big red barns, a room filled with nothing but large blowers, and much more. I was fascinated, and my eyes were opened to the world of process engineering. A few phone calls later, my plans at Prein&Newhof had changed. Instead of general municipal work, I became the newest member of the process engineering team and began learning about things like flanges, impellers, and plug valves.
What is process engineering?
Even after graduating with a general civil engineering degree, I hadn’t heard the term before. Process engineering is involved with the design of equipment and systems that apply energy to (and sometimes extract energy from) water or wastewater to transport or treat it. After all, water doesn’t flow uphill, and the waste we send down our drains has a habit of remaining waste unless we apply some energy to it.
Process equipment includes pumps, blowers, mechanically cleaned screens, grit removal systems, clarifiers, bioreactors, mixers, aerators, thickeners, digesters, and much more. This equipment is packaged together at facilities such as pump stations and treatment plants. These facilities are all around us, often tucked away by rivers and creeks—out of sight, out of mind. But this typically unseen infrastructure is critical to our communities.
Take pump stations, for example. The purpose of a pump station is to lift wastewater and push it through a force main to a high point where it can return to flowing by gravity. Without them, it would be nearly impossible to convey wastewater over large distances or from low areas to a wastewater treatment plant.
There are all sorts of pump stations in our communities. Some use pumps that you could lift by hand. Others use pumps that are as tall as a giraffe and weigh a few tons. Some pump from one corner of an intersection to another. Others pump up to 20 miles away. Some pump as much water as a garden hose. Others pump enough wastewater to fill an Olympic swimming pool in less than 20 minutes—that’s about 50 million gallons each day.
What does it mean to be a process engineer?
As process engineers, we get to be on the cutting edge of some remarkable advancements in water and wastewater technology. We live in a world where equipment can automatically start, stop, adjust, optimize, ramp up and down, open, close, throttle, reverse, and much more based on signals like flow rate, oxygen concentration, water level, and electrical resistance. Entire water and wastewater treatment processes can run themselves with very little operator input.
These advancements are important because of our growing awareness of how much we depend on clean water both before and after we use it. Because of this awareness, increasingly strict limits are placed on how “clean” our treated water must be before it is returned to a river or creek. It’s our responsibility as process engineers to help communities steward our environment in a way that doesn’t financially burden the owners of that system—us.
At Prein&Newhof, we realize that providing clean water is not just about helping communities get the latest and greatest technology. While technology has its place, we strive to think like operators as we design systems that are simple, maintainable, and replaceable. It’s operators who are the true experts in our field. They are the ones monitoring water and wastewater treatment plants 24/7 to prevent any dangerous upsets in the treatment process. They are the ones running out to a pump station that lost power during heavy rain to make sure wastewater doesn’t back up in our basements. The easier we can make their jobs, the better.
In addition to thinking like operators, process engineers at Prein&Newhof get to wear many other hats. Some days we are selecting materials and colors for a new building to house process equipment. Other days we are checking on steel reinforcement before a concrete pour. We get to design underground pipelines, coordinate with mechanical and electrical engineers, and provide complex sequences of operation for equipment programmers. And the best part of our job? We get to watch as the systems we have designed are constructed and put into operation. There is always a special sense of satisfaction when we can see and admire the results of our work.
While I wouldn’t have predicted it ten years ago, I’m thankful I ended up in a position where I can serve our community as a process engineer. It has provided a way to steward this beautiful creation while tapping into my nerdy side every now and then. Of course, it has one downside: it’s hard to drive by a pump station without pointing it out to my family! But I point it out because I’m proud of the work I do. It’s easy to forget about the infrastructure we don’t see, but for me, pump stations and treatment plants are powerful symbols of service to others and a reminder of the daily blessings we often take for granted. We are providing a service that previous generations have given to us, and it is a privilege to pass it on to the next generation.
