Wastewater treatment biological solids

Industry and Business. Flow reactor systems are vital in any process industry. This includes the oil and gas, petrochemical, and chemical industries. Flow reactors are also important in metallurgy. Increasingly, the pharmaceutical, food, and biochemical industries have made use of flow reactors as well. Flow reactors have also become relevant in the waste-management industry, particularly in biological wastewater treatment and solid-waste incineration plants. 

Biological wastewater treatment processes also affect solids characteristics and hence solids separation. Activated sludge solids have been found to have a distinct bimodal distribution with one mode in the supracolloidal to settleable range and another near the border between the colloidal and supracolloidal fractions. The concentrations and size limits in each range are affected by conditions in the... 

Secondary Treatment A wastewater treatment process used to convert dissolved or suspended materials into a form more readily separated from the water being treated. Usually the process follows primary treatment by sedimentation. The process commonly is a type of biological treatment process followed by secondary clarifiers that allow the solids to settle out from the water being treated. Sedimentation The process of subsidence and deposition of suspended matter from a wastewater by gravity. 

WAS Waste activated sludge, mg/L. The excess growth of microorganisms which must be removed from the process to keep the biological system in balance. Wastewater The used water and solids from a community that flow to a treatment plant. Storm water, surface water, and groundwater infiltration also may be included in the wastewater that enters a wastewater treatment plant. The term "sewage" usually refers to household wastes, but this word is being replaced by the term "wastewater". 

Figure 21.8 shows a typical sequence of the major equipment systems in a wastewater treatment plant.36 The function of primary treatment is to remove suspended solids from the wastewater, and then to remove organic materials by biological secondary treatment. Primary treatment processes used by kraft mills typically involve screening followed by either sedimentation or flotation.40... 

Efficiencies for removal in the wastewater treatment plant were estimated for total and soluble BOD, total COD, soluble COD, color, total suspended and dissolved solids, and total solids. The removal efficiencies summarized in Table 21.14 are high for total BOD, soluble BOD, and suspended solids, at 96%, 96%, and 95%, respectively. The removal efficiencies for total and soluble COD were significantly lower at 76% and 66%, respectively. The removal efficiency for color was only about 38%. This value is typical for biological treatment of pulp and paper wastewater, and may be due, at least partially, to the formation of new colored groups when the bleach effluents are oxidized in the treatment system. 

The separation of immiscible liquids and solids is performed by gravity separation in API Separators (or equivalent) or even the wastewater stripper feed drum. The purpose is to remove as much of the nondissolved organics from the wastewater as possible prior to biological treatment. Settleable solids are also removed by air flotation after stripping to further reduce the load on the biological treatment unit. 

Land availability for the wastewater treatment system should be determined. There are a number of tradeoffs that can be made in the biological processing step and biological solids disposal to reduce land requirements. 

Environmental engineering Wastewater and industrial waste treatment Biological waste treatment Solid waste processing Soil and hazardous waste management... 

Temperature Most industrial wastes tend to be on the warm side. For the most part, temperature is not a critical issue below 37°C if wastewaters are to receive biological treatment. It is possible to operate thermophilic biological wastewater-treatment systems up to 65°C with acclimated microbes. Low-temperature operations in northern climates can result in very low winter temperatures and slow reaction rates for both biological treatment systems and chemical treatment systems. Increased viscosity of wastewaters at low temperatures makes solid separation more difficult. Efforts are generally made to keep operating temperatures between 10 and 30°C if possible. 

---