Advanced Primary Treatment. Built for Wet Weather.

As utilities face increasing wet weather flows, aging infrastructure, limited site space, and growing pressure to improve energy efficiency, conventional primary treatment is being asked to do more than ever before.

PROTEUS® is a versatile water-treatment platform that combines physical filtration and biological treatment. In North America, its most impactful application is high-rate primary treatment and wet weather flow management, helping utilities expand capacity, recover resources, and improve operational resilience.

Key Benefits

Up to 80% footprint savings
Approximately 15-minute treatment tim
Chemical-free solids removal
No rotating moving parts
Stable performance during wet weather events
Increased solids recovery for energy production
Reduced downstream biological loading

The Challenge

Your plant must treat the peak, even when it wasn't built for it. Wastewater treatment facilities are increasingly challenged by:

Expanding conventional clarifiers often requires valuable land, major civil construction, and significant capital investment.
Storm events can rapidly increase hydraulic loading, threatening plant capacity and downstream process stability.

Many utilities need additional capacity without replacing entire treatment trains.
Facilities are under growing pressure to reduce energy consumption and maximize resource recovery.

The challenge is no longer simply treating wastewater. It is treating more flow, with less space, greater efficiency, and better long-term economics.

Why Proteus?

Versatile

PROTEUS® is not a single-purpose technology. It is a configurable platform engineered for multiple treatment objectives.

Applications include:

Primary Treatment
Wet Weather Flow Treatment
Secondary Treatment
Tertiary Treatment
Water Reuse
Groundwater Remediation
RO Concentrate Treatment

Like the shape-shifting sea god from which it takes its name, PROTEUS® adapts to the treatment challenge while maintaining the same core platform.

Proven

PROTEUS® has demonstrated performance across a wide range of treatment applications and facility sizes.

60+ installations worldwide
Named one of the world's Top 10 Primary Treatment Technologies by Global Water Intelligence
Selected for The Water Council Pilot Program and validated at MMSD's South Shore facility
Ranked first in TSS and COD removal during California Energy Commission Advanced Primary evaluations among the technologies tested

Innovative

At the core of PROTEUS® is proprietary cross-shaped buoyant media that combines physical filtration and biological treatment within a single platform.

Unlike traditional filtration systems that treat water across a single surface, PROTEUS® utilizes the full depth and volume of the media bed, creating a true three-dimensional treatment environment.

This 3D approach improves resilience to fluctuating flows, maintains performance during wet weather events, and helps prevent clogging before it becomes a problem. The result is reliable, compact treatment with lower maintenance requirements and greater operational flexibility.

High-Rate Primary Treatment

Traditional primary clarification relies on gravity settling and detention times of two to three hours.

PROTEUS® Primary replaces settling with buoyant-media upflow filtration, reducing treatment time to approximately 15 minutes while delivering equal or better solids removal within about 20% of a conventional clarifier footprint.

Featured Model: PROTEUS® Primary

By concentrating treatment into a significantly smaller footprint, PROTEUS® creates opportunities for future expansion, water reuse infrastructure, energy projects, and facility modernization.
PROTEUS® Primary uses physical filtration to capture suspended solids without relying on chemical addition, reducing operating complexity and chemical consumption.
With no rotating moving parts and gravity-driven backwashing, PROTEUS® Primary reduces maintenance requirements and improves reliability.
Primary treatment is no longer just about removing solids.
By capturing more solids and organics upstream, PROTEUS® Primary diverts valuable carbon toward anaerobic digestion, supporting greater biogas generation while reducing downstream aeration demand.
The result:
- Increased biogas production
- Reduced energy consumption
- Lower biological loading
- Greater energy self-sufficiency
PROTEUS® transforms primary treatment from a removal process into a resource recovery opportunity.

Built for Wet Weather Flow

Don't build for the peak. Treat the peak.

As heavy rainfall events become more frequent and intense, utilities need solutions that can handle rapid increases in hydraulic loading without sacrificing treatment performance.

Unlike conventional settling processes, PROTEUS® uses high-rate filtration through a three-dimensional media bed, allowing treatment to remain effective even under changing flow conditions.

Why Utilities Consider PROTEUS® for Wet Weather Flow:

Handles rapid hydraulic surges
Responds effectively to variable loading conditions
Maintains stable solids capture during storms
Operates without rotating equipment prone to clogging
Helps facilities add capacity without significant footprint expansion
Supports both routine primary treatment and high-flow wet weather applications on the same platform

Whether implemented as a dedicated wet weather solution or integrated into primary treatment infrastructure, PROTEUS® helps utilities protect performance when conditions are most demanding.

The Technology Behind PROTEUS®

PROTEUS® combines physical filtration and biological treatment within a single platform.

As wastewater moves upward through a bed of cross-shaped buoyant media:

Suspended solids are physically captured within the media bed.
Attached microorganisms biologically remove dissolved contaminants.
Treated water exits the reactor.
Gravity-driven backwashing restores media performance.

The same technology can be optimized by adjusting:

Media size
Bed depth
Flow velocity
Aeration
Operating conditions

This flexibility allows PROTEUS® to support diverse treatment objectives while maintaining a compact footprint.

Jungnang Wastewater Recovery Facility

Capacity: 66 MGD

Large-scale primary treatment and wet weather flow management in Seoul, demonstrating substantial footprint savings compared to conventional clarification.

“We need these new options to meet the challenges of the future.”

— Dr. Glen Daigger, Ph.D., P.E., BCEE, NAE

Learn more

Proteus Extended Platform

Scalable Configurations for Every Process Stage

The Proteus® Primary Package

A compact, modular primary treatment package designed for high‑rate performance and wet‑weather resilience.

Each package can treat up to 2.2 MGD while achieving over 75% TSS removal without chemical addition.

Unlike conventional clarifiers, PROTEUS® Package is factory-built, delivered to site, and installed with minimal field work, reducing construction complexity and accelerating deployment.

Learn more

PROTEUS PRIMARY

Retrofit old conventional primary clarifiers to save space, increase capacity and upgrade processes by grabbing more solids upstream of aeration basins and sending them to digestors for maximum energy efficiency.

PROTEUS PRIMARY
PROTEUS WET WEATHER FLOW

With continuous aeration capabilities and no settling required, the system can manage high peaking factors and variable flow rates, simplifying the treatment of dilute flows.

PROTEUS WWF
PROTEUS SECONDARY

Achieve higher water quality standards and comply with effluent discharge limits with a range of secondary treatment functions, such as BOD reduction, nitrification, and denitrification.

PROTEUS SECONDARY
PROTEUS TERTIARY

Configurable to operate under various water quality conditions and achieve stable water quality for reuse applications or alternatives to water resources.

PROTEUS TERTIARY
GROUNDWATER

The Proteus biofiltration process is highly effective at remediating contaminants such as nitrate, perchlorate, and organics to meet Federal Maximum Contamination Level (MCL).

GROUNDWATER
RO CONCENTRATE

RO Concentrate Treatment with Proteus leverages a biofiltration technology that efficiently removes high concentrations of nitrogen and other pollutants without requiring sedimentation tanks, minimizing land use and lowering construction and maintenance costs.

RO CONCENTRATE

PROTEUS CHARACTERISTICS

  
    
      
      
      
      
    
    
        Solution
        Proteus Primary
        Proteus+
        Proteus NDN
      

    
        Treatment Principle
        Physical Filtration: Removal of suspended solids
        Physical Filtration: Removal of suspended solids
Biological Treatment: Removal of dissolved organic matter
        Physical Filtration: Removal of suspended solids
Biological Treatment: Removal of organic matter and nutrients
      

        Application Area
        Primary Treatment
Wet Weather Flow
Carbon Diversion
        Wet Weather Flow
Public Sewage Treatment
        Secondary Treatment
Tertiary Treatment
Groundwater Remediation
RO Concentrate Treatment
      

        Filtration Speed
        20~25 m/hr
        15~20 m/hr
        5~10 m/hr
      

        Target Water Quality
        BOD/SS less than 50~60 mg/L
        BOD/SS less than 40 mg/L
        TN less than 10~15 mg/L
      

        Components
        Strainer Block
Floating Media
        Strainer Block
Floating Media
Diffuser
        Strainer Block
Floating Media
Diffuser
      

  

PROTEUS PLUS

The upgraded Proteus Plus configuration adds a layer of aerated biofilm for high-rate biological treatment which does not require chemicals or redirection of biomass.
PATENTED EPP MEDIA

The expanded polypropylene (EPP) media design provides the ideal surface area to build biofilm for high solids loading rates.
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PRE-ENGINEERED SOLUTIONS

Easy construction option for management of primary wet weather flows, capacity increase, or as a tertiary bolt-on for nutrient control.