Characterization of influent wastewater with periodic variation and snow melting effect in cold climate area

Abstract

The daily, weekly and seasonal variation of influent characteristics of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) highly affects the performance of wastewater treatment. In cold climate area, snow melting happens frequently in cold season and affects wastewater characteristics significantly. The dilution effect of snow melting in cold season makes it impossible to compare cold season influent and warm season influent fairly. To enable the study of influent seasonal variation, a stepwise approach was developed to determine whether the WWTP influent wastewater contains snowmelt (wet climate) or not (dry climate). This study investigated the daily, weekly and seasonal variation of WWTP influent, and provided evidence of climate effect on influent characteristics by analyzing the correlation of climatic information and wastewater characteristics. A classification model was developed to further discriminate climate conditions of influent, which will be applied to develop scenario-based soft sensor as well as support WWTP surveillance and control.