A team of six students from the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University took home second place in the Student Design Competition from the 11th annual Water Environment Association of Texas (WEAT) Texas Water Conference. The design competition is intended to promote real-world design experience for students interested in pursuing an education or career in water or wastewater engineering and sciences.
The team was made up of graduate students Suparna Mukhopadhyay, Oluwabukola Esho, Swapnil Dusane, Prachi Kala, Dhruv Deshmukh and Niyati Jogani. The team began working on this project in October 2016.
The prompt for this year’s competition was to design an upgrade for the Upper Trinity Regional Water District’s Riverbend Water Reclamation Plant located in Denton County in Aubrey, Texas. The teams designed plans to upgrade the existing plant from two to four million gallons per day of average annual daily flow while ensuring that the outflow meets the regulatory requirements. Teams from six schools competed.
The team from Texas A&M presented a comprehensive report and presentation that proposed changes to the wastewater treatment plant necessary for expansion with consideration to hydraulic impacts, operational and maintenance cost, and plant functionality throughout the upgrading process.
“It was a great learning experience,” said Mukhopadhyay. “We got a chance to apply our classroom learning in a practical setting and understand what expectations the industry has from students like us.”