Local company helps municipalities clean up contaminated public water supplies

Altair Equipment, a Warminster-based company providing water treatment equipment and services around the world primarily for industrial applications, is offering its services to Bucks and Montgomery County municipalities—including partnering with its “home” township of Warminster—to quickly deliver safe, effective solutions to the current PFOS and PFOA contamination of the public water supplies resulting from fire-treatment chemicals at the former Naval Air Development Center.

Approximately a year ago the Warminster Township officials learned that PFOS and PFOA found in their municipal wells exceeded acceptable levels. They approached Altair to identify and install treatment technologies so that water supplied and waste water discharged meets or exceeds new EPA standards for safety.

Altair identified a test location and installed tanks on a well head to adsorb the chemical. The system immediately achieved positive results and continues to operate.

Altair recently installed and started up a permanent water treatment system for Warminster Township, replacing the temporary emergency treatment system initially supplied by Altair. The system ensures safe drinking water significantly below the revised EPA recommended levels, treating up to 185 gallons per minute at the well site.

“The new system’s twin tanks are in series,” explains Donald R. Keer, P.E., Altair’s director of engineering and general manager. “The first tank removes contaminants to the EPA recommended 70 parts per trillion, then the second tank ‘polishes’ the water further.

“The tanks are consistently monitored for output, since the filtering material—what we call ‘media’—needs to be replaced regularly. As soon as the first tank no longer removes contaminants to the full EPA-recommended limit, both tanks are serviced and new media is installed.

“This ‘worker-polisher’ arrangement ensures the safety of the drinking water for all residents using the municipal water supply. At this point, we are returning to the site to exchange the media about every three months.”

Based on the results at this well, adjacent townships of Horsham and Warrington have approached Altair to assist them with the removal of PFOS and PFOA from their public water supplies.

• Horsham piloted an Altair rental unit December–March 2016, and currently is installing temporary systems while permanent ones are designed and built for township applications.
• Warminster purchased two Altair units in December through its engineering firm (CKS Engineers, Doylestown); these are to be placed inside two new well buildings.
• Altair has also supplied a rental shipping container to the U.S. Air Force, which is installed and operating.

Recently the EPA modified the PFOS and PFOA recommended levels, reducing the contamination levels from 0.4 parts per billion PFOA and 0.2 PPM PFOS (1 ppb=1000 parts per trillion) to a maximum combined level of 0.07 ppb or 70 ppt. This change, which is an “EPA Advisory” and not a mandate, went into effect mid-May 2016. The military, in its evaluation and clean up of approximately 664 sites—many potentially impacting multiple well sites, had been using the old EPA levels.

Before and since the modification in EPA standards for PFOS and PFOA, Altair’s equipment meets the more rigorous levels. Most recently, in order to stay ahead of the curve Altair is working with Warminster Township to run a pilot study of a new technology developed at Temple University jointly with Purolite (a global company based in Bala Cynwyd that develops specialized ion exchange resins and adsorbent solutions) to further reduce the contaminants. The pilot plant was just installed this week and testing results will be available shortly.

Altair Equipment Company Inc., which recently tripled its workspace at 335 Constance Drive in Warminster, was founded in the early 1970s by Edward G. Krager and later expanded in both size and services by his sons Richard and Wayne. Today Altair's customers include major automobile manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, power suppliers and chemical companies as well as local municipalities. Installations include central power plants, purified & WFI systems, water-reuse systems and condensate polishers. To learn more: 215.672.9000, AltairEquipment.com.

Images (Credit: Mike Cirilo Photography)
Dave Nawrocki, left, Krager Construction, and Donald R. Keer, P.E., director of engineering and general manager for Altair Equipment, stand next to the permanent water treatment system that Altair recently installed and started up for Warminster Township.
Warminster Township’s newly installed twin “worker-polisher” tanks in series