Case Study: Radisson project

Pierre Moses
Eng., Technical Services Manager,Baie-James Municipality

"The stability of the DaguaFlo system is a real asset for our community, especially since we can always count on Dagua’s exceptional service. The plant operator spends less than 60 minutes a day and the quality of the treated water exceeds government standards by as much as 11 times."

In March 2005, Radisson, a community of 500 people that is part of the Baie-James Municipality , commissioned its new drinking water treatment plant – the DaguaFlo-UMF.

This project became necessary in 2001 to ensure compliance with Quebec’s new Regulation Respecting the Quality of Drinking Water. It provided for achieving government standards in the treatment of surface water drawn from the Robert-Bourassa Reservoir.

The Radisson project involved establishing and implementing an innovative and chemical-free drinking water treatment process using ozone and membrane filtration, certified by the Quebec Drinking Water Treatment Technologies Committee. Partners in the project were Radisson and the Baie-James Municipality, as well as Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, one of the world’s leading engineering services organizations, and Dagua.

Claude Gagné, Director of Radisson at the time, underscored the project’s significance to the town’s citizens: “We are very satisfied with the outcome of this priority project which allows us to meet the new drinking water standards and solve the persistent problem of water discolouration, while benefiting from a new technology that requires little operating time.”

“SNC-Lavalin is pleased to be associated with innovative projects that can benefit communities like Radisson, given a global context where access to quality drinking water is a growing concern,” stated Éric Pinard, Engineer and Project Manager for SNC-Lavalin.

Technical specifications

  • Technology: DaguaFlo-UMF (21 μm prefilter, ozone, membrane and microbiological filtration)
  • Design flow: 740 m3/day
  • Raw water source: Robert-Bourassa Reservoir
  • Automatic remote data acquisition by programmable logic controller (PLC) via the Internet
  • Main problems to correct: colour, pH, coliforms, organic matter

  • Operator profile: municipal mechanics

Performance indicators for the first 12 months of operation

  • All 400 chemical analyses of the treated water indicated compliance with the Quebec Regulation Respecting the Quality of Drinking Water.
  • Plant availability was 99.61%.
  • Average time spent per day on plant operation: less than 30 minutes.

Graph 1 illustrates the turbidity of both the raw water and the water treated with the DaguaFlo-UMF process in Radisson. Data was collected at 4-hour intervals by the programmable logic controller (PLC) and uploaded via an Internet link.

Graph 1

Graph 2 illustrates the trans-membrane pressure and demonstrates the absence of membrane fouling over an 11-month period.

Graph 2

Conclusion

Over 18 consecutive months, the turbidity of the treated water registered an average result that was 11 times better than the government standard of 0.5 NTU, and never exceeded the regulatory limit.

These exceptional results demonstrate the system’s technical reliability, the minimal operator time required and above all, the superior quality of the treated water supplied to Radisson’s residents on an ongoing basis.