Fort McMurray
As part of the expansion of the Fort McMurray Tertiary Waste Water
Treatment Plant, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo gave Earth Tech the
order to design a biosolids composting plant.
The design population of 85,000 persons results in a facility with 5 tunnels
each able to compost 817 m3 of biosolids mixed with woodchips with a total
retention time of 21 days.
The Fort McMurray Biosolids Composting plant is planned to be started up
early 2008.
Due to population growth, significant upgrades to Fort McMurray’s current
lagoon-based treatment system became necessary and construction of a new
Water Reclamation Facility was undertaken.
The design allowed for a new state-of-the-art indoor composting system to stabilize
blended sludge from the fermentation and secondary treatment processes.
The blended sludge is conveyed directly to a mixing tank via a series of augers.
Wood chips are added to the tank and the two sources are thoroughly mixed, to
produce a blended mix ready for composting. The mix is then composted in series
of concrete tunnels for 21 days. There are 7 tunnels used on a rotating basis, with
provisions to expand the system up to nine tunnels.
