Chase Center, California, USA

Introduction

The Golden State Warriors have a rich history of success since their foundation in the mid 1940s. The team boasts multiple NBA Championships and holds some impressive NBA records including best regular season.

But it’s the commitment to sustainability that may end up defining the team’s legacy into the future. The Warriors are not just the first team to win in the NBA, they’re also the first to sign up to the United Sports for Climate Action Initiative. When they opened Chase Centre – their new stadium – just a few years ago, it’s little surprise that it aimed to consume water responsibly through efficient fixtures, using recycled water on site and operating a clever irrigation system feeding drought tolerant plants.

aquacell and Chase Center

The Warrior’s home employs a range of water conservation strategies centered around a graywater recovery system designed and installed by Aquacell, which captures and recycles water from hand basins and showers.

This reclaimed water is treated on-site and reused for toilet flushing, while stormwater from the expansive roof is captured and collected for irrigation and application in cooling towers. That the system saves almost 3 million gallons of water annually is a key contributor to the Chase Center earning it’s LEED Gold Certification.

    the aquacell solution

    During a comprehensive planning process, the Aquacell team worked closely with Hathaway Dinwiddie and ACCO, designing, manufacturing and installing the graywater recycling system for the Chase Centre development.

    The design centred around two parallel streams to meet the water demand and align with site constraints. The two identical Aquacell GX100 gray and rainwater recycling units that were installed are capable of processing up to 26,400 gallons per day. Having two separate skids installed provides extra flexibility to cope with variations in demand. One can operate during low-flow conditions, and two are able to cope with the high-flow requirements that come about on game day. It also allows for uninterrupted operation during service & maintenance.

    Non-potable water produced by the two Aquacell GX100s is used throughout the development for flushing toilets, irrigation and makeup water for the cooling towers.

    Graywater flows into a moving-bed bioreactor (MBBR) where biological digestion occurs prior to being passed through a lamella clarifier where suspended solids are settled out and clarified water passes to a break tank. From here, the biologically treated and clarified water is pumped through an automatically backwashing disc filter, where coarse solids (greater than 130-micron) are removed before being pumped through pressurised ultrafiltration membranes.

    UF filtrate is stored in a small break tank and some of this is recycled for use as backwash water. The remainder is pumped to a granular activated carbon unit for removal of residual colour, prior to the two-stage disinfection process of ultraviolet light and chlorination. Disinfected water then flows into the non-potable water storage tank and is distributed for toilet flushing, irrigation and cooling-water uses.