Abstract
Aeration is considered as one of the most energy consuming process during the wastewater treatment process and its proper design plays important role in further overall wastewater treatment plant energy balance. Design guidelines for aeration systems in mainstream treatment of municipal wastewater are well known, however there are some doubts about transferring them to sidestream treatment installations. Different process rates, reactors geometry and treated medium composition may significantly affect aeration efficiency and this case must be verified. Series of alpha factor measurements were performed during start-up of shortcut nitrification process of real reject water from sludge dewatering. Surprisingly, observed alpha factor values were close and higher than 1.0 which is uncommon for such aeration devices as used in this study. Paper presents discussion of potential reasons of observed facts and outlines directions of further work.
Highlights
Role of oxygen in natural water purification processes was known long before society ecological awareness turned their attention to the need of wastewater treatment
Start-up was performed based on conventional activated sludge sample collected from the same WWTP as treated reject water
Nitrogen loading rate (NLR) was adjusted daily by the operator based on performed ammonia uptake rate tests (AUR) and composition of the reactor effluent, measured daily
Summary
Role of oxygen in natural water purification processes was known long before society ecological awareness turned their attention to the need of wastewater treatment. Different aeration methods and available equipment evolved significantly in the past 100 years along with development of wastewater treatment technologies. In recent years, increasing popularity of sidestream treatment technologies, created new challenge in case of aeration systems in these solutions. It is unsure, whether design practice known from mainstream air distribution systems is fully transferable to sidestream processes, i.e. shortcut nitrification or partial nitritation reactor in a two-step deammonification process [3]. Reject water from sludge dewatering has way different composition than municipal wastewater which may affect oxygen transfer in systems treating this medium. Sidestream systems can be different in other aspects, such as higher nitrification process rates, biomass concentration level and relatively small reactor volume, resulting in the final dimensions of the aeration tank
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