The Basin Creek Water Treatment Plant uses a cutting-edge ceramic membrane filtration system, the first of its kind to be installed in the United States.

Ceramic has many benefits over membrane filters, including physical strength, chemical resistance and longer life expectancy, with a 20-year warranty on the filter. Another benefit is its high recovery, resulting in less waste. Basin Creek’s recovery skid was designed to filter backwash waste from the process, resulting in an overall 99.95 percent production capability. Lastly, in the U.S. membrane market for drinking water filtration, we are accustomed to requiring chemical clean in place of filters on a monthly basis. The CIP interval for the ceramic filters installed at Basin Creek is every six months. This means that chemical use is decreased, operation staff labor is cut, and energy use associated with heating chemicals and pumping is significantly reduced.

Another way Basin Creek minimizes energy consumption is by maximizing gravity. Other WTPs operate by gravity, but what makes Basin Creek unique is that it operates as an on-demand system. Though complicated to design, Basin Creek’s system is elegant and very simple to operate. Staff does not make decisions about how much water to treat in order to meet demand. Instead, demand itself sets the flow rate through the WTP.