Wastewater treatment performance

Low concentrations of oil can be removed by dissolved air flotation (DAF). In this process, an effluent recycle is pressurized in the presence of excess air, causing additional air to go into solution, in accordance with Henry s Law. When this water is discharged to the inlet chamber of the flotation unit at close to atmospheric pressure, the dissolved air comes out of solution in the form of tiny air bubbles which attach themselves to and become enmeshed in suspended solids and oil globules. The primary design criteria is the air/solids ratio, which is defined as the mass of air released divided by the mass of solids fed. Sufficient air must be released to capture the solids in the influent wastewater. The performance of DAF for the treatment of several... 

Filtration is employed when the suspended soUds concentration is less than 100 mg/L and high effluent clarity is required. Finely dispersed suspended soUds require the addition of a coagulant prior to filtration. Filters most commonly used in wastewater treatment are a dual media (anthrafUt and sand) or a moving bed or continuous-backwash sand filter. Performance data for the tertiary filtration of municipal and industrial wastewater are shown in Table 10. 

Pulp bleaching with chlorine dioxide is most often performed at an acidic pH, so that the final pH of the bleach Hquor is in the range of 2—5. Under these conditions, the residual concentration of chlorite and chlorate ions in the bleach Hquor are minimized and chloride ion is the predominant chlorine species in the spent bleach (77). In addition to direct addition to pulp in bleaching, chlorine dioxide also finds use in wastewater treatment from pulp mill operations as a means to remove effluent color (85). 

Foam Fractionation. An interesting experimental method that has been performed for wastewater treatment of disperse dyes is foam fractionation (88). This method is based on the phenomenon that surface-active solutes collect at gas—Hquid iaterfaces. The results were 86—96% color removal from a brown disperse dye solution and 75% color removal from a textile mill wastewater. Unfortunately, the necessary chemical costs make this method relatively expensive (see Foams). 

Much of the experience and data from wastewater treatment has been gained from municipal treatment plants. Industrial liquid wastes are similar to wastewater but differ in significant ways. Thus, typical design parameters and standards developed for municipal wastewater operations must not be blindly utilized for industrial wastewater. It is best to run laboratory and small pilot tests with the specific industrial wastewater as part of the design process. It is most important to understand the temporal variations in industrial wastewater strength, flow, and waste components and their effect on the performance of various treatment processes. Industry personnel in an effort to reduce cost often neglect laboratory and pilot studies and depend on waste characteristics from similar plants. This strategy often results in failure, delay, and increased costs. Careful studies on the actual waste at a plant site cannot be overemphasized. 

Evaluates the performance of each unit of a wastewater treatment plant based on hydraulic loadings, solid flux loadings, food/microorganism ratios, sludge age, settleability, and related parameters. 

It should be noted that the total loss of head of a filter bed is in inverse ratio to the depth of penetration of the matter in suspension. In a normal wastewater treatment plant, the water is brought onto a series of rapid sand filters and the impurities are removed by coagulation-flocculation-filtration. Backwashing is typically performed in the counterfiow mode, using air and water. One type of common filter is illustrated in Figure 6, consisting of closed horizontal pressurized filters. 

The activated sludge process for domestic wastewater treatment was introduced to the world in 1914.1 Since then, many studies have been conducted to improve the oxygen transfer efficiency. Among the aeration devices introduced have been a porous diffuser, a filter type diffuser, a mechanical aeration device, an orifice type diffuser and a fine-pore air diffuser. The aeration market is in a substantial state of flux in the USA today. Emphasis on high efficiency has led many intensive research programmes to aim at the evaluation of the design, operation and control processes to improve overall system performance. 

Whole cells are grown for a variety of reasons. The cells may perform a desired transformation of the substrate, e.g., wastewater treatment the cells themselves may be the desired produce, e.g., yeast production or the cells may produce a desired product, e.g., penicillin. In the later case, the desired product may be excreted, as for the penicillin example, and recovered in relatively simple fashion. If the desired product is retained within the cell walls, it is necessary to lyse (rupture) the cells and recover the product from a complex mixture of cellular proteins. This approach is often needed for therapeutic proteins that are created by recombinant DNA technology. The resulting separation problem is one of the more challenging aspects of biochemical engineering. However, culture of the cells can be quite difficult experimentally and is even more demanding theoretically. 

Very limited data on the heat and mass transfer in three-phase inverse fluidization systems is available up to now. For the wastewater treatment, the reactor temperature should be controlled and maintained within a certain level to optimize the reactor performance, since the temperature of reactor or process can provide the microorganisms with favorable circumances. 

The innovative flotation-filtration wastewater treatment system (Figure 6.6) using conventional chemicals has the highest flexibility and best performance. When desirable, the innovative chemical FeS or equivalent can also be used. 

Hamilton Standard of the U.S. EPA has reported several coil coating plants wastewater treatment case histories.8,9 A full-scale wastewater treatment plant system has performed well for treatment of the wastewater generated from coil coating steel subcategory operations. The process principles and operational data of the full-scale treatment of a steel subcategory wastewater are summarized herein for the convenience of readers ... 

The activated sludge process for meat processing wastewater treatment was reported by Annachhatre and Bhamidimarri.37 When a model reactor was operated at an HRT of 5-15 h, a COD removal of more than 85% was achieved. The COD loading for the above performance was 3.2kg COD/(m3d). An SRT of 13 d resulted in almost complete nitrification. El-Gohary et al.30 reported that the activated sludge process reduced the BOD and COD of a potato-chips factory wastewater by 86% and 84%, respectively. The organic loading rate and HRT were reported as 8.9 kg BOD/ (m3d) and 6h, respectively. 

Sridang, P.C., Pottier, A., Wisniewski, C., and Grasmick, A., Performance and microbial surveying in submerged membrane bioreactor for seafood processing wastewater treatment, Journal of Membrane Science, 317,43-49, 2008. 

Denac, M., and Dunn, I. J., Packed- and Fluidized-Bed Biofilm Reactor Performance for Anaerobic Wastewater Treatment, Biotechnol. Bioeng., 32 159 (1988)... 

A sewer network and any corresponding treatment have traditionally been separately designed and operated. Two different and separate functions have been dealt with the sewer system must collect and convey the wastewater to the treatment plant, and the treatment plant must reduce pollution load into the receiving water according to the quality standards set. Consequently, sewers are often just considered input systems at the boundaries where they are connected with wastewater treatment plants and overflow structures that discharge untreated wastewater into watercourses during rainfall. This traditional approach to sewer performance needs considerable improvement. 

A new in situ probe [25] was presented for the continuous measurement of ammonium and nitrate in a biological wastewater treatment plant. Based on the use of electrochemical measurement, the sensor can be immersed and requires minimum maintenance. The tests carried out to compare its performance with those of other procedures (including UV for nitrate) showed that the results were rather close, with a detection limit of 0.1 mg L 1 for both analytes. 

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