Xylem's Leopold brand history
Heritage
For a century, Xylem's Leopold brand has served the water and wastewater treatment industry, continually innovating to improve municipal water quality.
F.B. Leopold established the company in 1924 in Pittsburgh, PA, as a construction company. Within two years, Leopold had developed, patented and installed the first dual parallel lateral underdrain.
In the decades that followed, the company continued to innovate in filter underdrains, and expand its portfolio to address industry needs for sludge collection, clarification, and filter media.
In 1977, Leopold introduced the breakthrough Universal underdrain featuring both air and water backwashing. The new underdrain also marked a shift from concrete and clay tile to HDPE material.
Since then, Leopold has continued to advance underdrain performance. Today our underdrain portfolio is characterized by uniform air and water distribution, superior uplift resistance, and effective media retention, producing cleaner filters, longer filter runs and lower operating costs.
Process expertise and technological leadership
Xylem engineers are available to help analyze, evaluate and design filtration systems, including evaluating influent water qualities, determining optimal loading rates and best design configuration, selecting the best media characteristics, and designing the backwash process. Xylem’s Leopold FilterWorx® performance filter system comes complete with flume, underdrains, integral media support, engineered media, backwash water troughs, and system controls. The result is a cost-effective, efficient, high-performance system designed to meet customer requirements and regulatory limits.
Xylem's Leopold elimi-NITE® 2.0 dentrification system applies this gravity media filtration expertise to remove nitrate and suspended solids in wastewater treatment, while Xylem's Leopold Oxelia® system provides oxidation-enhanced biologically active filtration for a multi-barrier defense against pathogens, organic micropollutants, and other contaminants in surface water treatment, wastewater treatment, and water reuse applications.
To remove sludge solids in final clarifiers, Xylem offers sludge collection solutions with the Leopold Clari-VAC® floating sludge collector and the Leopold CT2® submerged sludge collector.