3. Background
An advanced wastewater treatment process “PO*WW*ER” was first developed by the
Chemical Waste Management, Inc. (CWM) and adopted by Waste Management
International, plc (WMI) to execute a design-build-operate (DBO) contract for the
Chemical Waste Treatment Center (CWTC) awarded by the Environmental Protection
Department (EPD) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR)
PO*WW*ERTM
was a trademark representing a physicochemical treatment and was an
acronym for the Process Oxidation, Waste Water and Evaporative Recovery. The system
was operated under a distributed control system (DCS) supported by Honeywell
Automation. The system was able to reduce the volume of aqueous waste and
catalytically oxidized volatile contaminants.
The PO*WW*ER system consists primarily of
(1) an evaporator that reduces influent wastewater volume;
(2) a catalytic oxidizer that oxidizes the volatile contaminants in the vapor stream from
the evaporator;
(3) a scrubber that removes acid gases produced during oxidation; and
(4) a condenser that condenses the vapor stream from the scrubber.
A trial run was arranged in Lake Charles, U.S.A. It was my first challenging assignment
in my career life in the capacity of Process Engineer. The first task was to perform test
& commissioning (T&C) for the system in Hong Kong. Later on, I worked closely with
an engineering team to carry out a modification study in order to utilize the burner more
efficiently and effectively in term of energy consumption.
