West Lafayette, Indiana is a city located about an hour northwest of the state capital, Indianapolis.

West Lafayette is home of the Purdue University Boilermakers. Purdue is a public land-grant research university in Indiana. West Lafayette is divided by its sister city, Lafayette, by the Wabash River. The population in West Lafayette is about 55,000.

Purdue University offers over 200 majors for undergraduates and over 70 masters or doctoral programs.

Duke Energy Purdue is an electrical utility company in West Lafayette.

Duke Energy and Purdue University joined together on a new power plant which is a combined heat and power plant near the Purdue campus. The power plant will serve Indiana customers along with powering Purdue University.

The plant produces both electricity and steam more effectively than typical utility plants from a cost perspective. The new power plant produces a new steam source option for heating the Purdue campus.

Romtec Utilities was contacted to fast track a project brought to us by F.A. Wilhelm. F.A. Wilhelm is the Midwest’s largest pourer of concrete, but they also construct smaller 20MW power plants.

F.A. Wilhelm originally brought us the “Hot Sump Basin” for our review, and then subsequently added on three other systems. RU ended up doing three total systems including: an Oil Water Separator, a Hot Sump Basin, and a Wash Drains Basin.  All these systems will be located inside a building.

The pump station Romtec designed and supplied collects Blowdown water from the power plant’s boiler. We designed the vault around the Oil and Water Separator which will discharge into the Hot Sump Basin with temps expected as high as 200 Fahrenheit.

Romtec Utilities provided the design and supply of these systems for the end owner, Duke Energy’s, new CHP plant. The new plant will produce more power for Duke Energy’s grid and increase its reliability.

IC Thomason and Associates is the civil engineer. IC Thomason is an engineering consulting firm out of Nashville, Tennessee.

Romtec Utilities provides pump stations and other systems for industrial applications like power plants, oil and gas plants, food and beverage, and data center cooling waste. We design and supply pump systems for a variety of different water types all over the country.

Here are the features of the systems we provided:

OWS (Oily Water Separator)
– Precast ~13′ length x 7′ wide Oil Water separator tank

Hot Sump Basin
– Precast 16′ length x 8′ width rectangular vault
– Duplex Deming 1.5hp vertical sump pumps
– Above grade Valve Skid w/ Basket Strainers and 2 inch piping and valves.

Wash Drains Basin
– Precast ~3.66′ length x 2.66 width vault