Effects of solid retention time on the performance of submerged anoxic/oxic membrane bioreactor.

In this study, four similar bench-scale submerged Anoxic/Oxic Membrane Bioreactors (MBR) were used simultaneously to investigate the effects of solids retention time (SRT) on organic and nitrogen removal in MBR for treating domestic wastewater. COD removal efficiencies in all reactors were consistently above 94% under steady state conditions. Complete conversion of NH(4+)-N to NO(3-)-N was readily achieved over a feed NH(4+)-N concentration range of 30 to 50 mg/L. It was also observed that SRT did not significantly affect the nitrification in the MBR systems investigated. The average denitrification efficiencies for the 3, 5, 10 and 20 days SRT operations were 43.9, 32.6, 47.5 and 66.5%, respectively. In general, the average effluent nitrogen concentrations, which were mainly nitrate, were about 22.2, 27.6, 21.7 and 13.9 mg/L for the 3, 5, 10 and 20 days SRT systems, respectively. The rate of membrane fouling at 3 days SRT operation was more rapid than that observed at 5 days SRT. No fouling was noted in the 10 days and 20 days SRT systems during the entire period of study.     

Rapid and comprehensive indicator for evaluation of performance of treatment processes and of river waters.

Naturally occurring UV active compounds, commonly present in almost all source waters, can be rapidly monitored by their ultraviolet absorbance at 260 nm (E260). Herein, the extent of correlation between the E260 and the removal efficiency of the hazardous contaminants, endocrine disrupters and dioxins, were investigated using various treatment and river source waters. The detection of various types of hazardous contaminants using sophisticated analytical methods, such as high resolution gas chromatography (HRGC)/high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)/inductively coupled plasma (ICP)/mass spectrometry (MS), as well as various short-term bioassays, can require hours or even days for results to be obtained. The removal of the E260 correlated well with those of individual contaminants, such as endocrine disruptor chemicals and dioxins, with the various treatment processes employed. In the plots of the endocrine disrupters against the DOC/E260, a correlation was found with the endocrine activity of the Korean/Japanese river waters employed in this study.     

The effects of deep zones on wetland nitrogen processing.

Twelve research wetlands were operated under varying conditions at a site west of the city of Phoenix. These were constructed as a triplicated design, with zero, one, two and three internal deep zones, all containing an inlet distribution and an outlet collection deep zone, together comprising 12.5-35% of the wetland areas. The water supply was partially nitrified effluent from a city wastewater treatment plant. Total nitrogen was reduced by about 50%, from inflow concentrations between 6 and 8 mg/L. Speciation of the inflow was approximately 25% organic nitrogen, 25% ammonium nitrogen and 50% nitrate nitrogen. Typical outflow concentrations were about 1.2 mg/L organic, 0.5 mg/L ammonium and 0.0-2.5 mg/L nitrate. Rate constants for total nitrogen were 15-20 m/year at 20 degrees C, and 20-30 m/year for nitrate, which agree well with other project reports. Temperature factors averaged 1.100 for total nitrogen, and 1.184 for nitrate. There were no differences in the internal hydraulics with deep zone numbers. Deep zone numbers in the wetlands did not affect nitrogen treatment performance. No differences with deep zone numbers were found for temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, or nitrogen removals or rate constants. In conjunction with other reported results, there appears to be no large treatment benefit or detriment of incorporating internal deep zones in free water surface wetlands.     

Colloidal silica removal in coagulation processes for wastewater reuse in a high-tech industrial park.

Four experiments of coagulation and flocculation were conducted to investigate the characteristics of colloidal silica removal in a high-tech industrial wastewater treatment plant for reclamation and reuse of the effluent. Experimental results illustrated that poly-aluminium chloride (PACl) showed higher performances on colloidal silica removal than alum. Interestingly, the two coagulants demonstrated the same capacity on silica removal. The specific silica removal capacity was approximately 0.135 mg SiO2/mg Al2O3 when the dosage of coagulants was in the range 30-150 mg/L Al2O3. In addition, the silica was reduced significantly at the condition of pH above 8. Experimental data implied that precipitation of aluminium flocs was the major mechanism for colloid silica removal in PACl and alum coagulation, besides, charge adsorption was also important for improving removal efficiency. Moreover, the addition of polyacrylic acid (PAA) as a flocculant could slightly advance silica removal in the PACl coagulation. The combined PACl/PAA/flocs coagulation was effective for the removal of colloidal silica, soluble COD, and turbidity and also suitable as a pretreatment unit in wastewater reclamation and reuse processes.     

High-rate sulphidogenic fluidised-bed treatment of metal-containing wastewater at high temperature.

The applicability of fluidised-bed reactor (FBR) based sulphate reducing bioprocess was investigated for the treatment of iron containing (40-90 mg/L) acidic wastewater at 65 degrees C. The FBR was inoculated with sulphate-reducing bacteria (SRB) originally enriched from a hot mining environment. Ethanol or acetate was supplemented as carbon and electron source for the SRB. A rapid startup with 99.9, 46 and 29% ethanol, sulphate and acetate removals, in respective order, was observed even after 6 days. Iron was almost completely removed with a rate of 90 mg/L.d. The feed pH was decreased gradually from its initial value of 6 to around 3.7 during 100 days of operation. The wastewater pH of 4.3-4.4 was neutralised by the alkalinity produced in acetate oxidation and the average effluent pH was 7.8 +/- 0.8. Although ethanol removal was complete, acetate accumulated. Later the FBR was fed with acetate only. Although acetate was present in the reactor for 295 days, its oxidation rates did not improve, which may be due to low growth rate and poor attachment ability of acetate oxidising SRB. Hence, the oxidation of acetate is the rate limiting step in the sulphidogenic ethanol oxidation by the thermophilic SRB.     

Evaluation of hydrological processes in a mountainous small basin using a quinone biomarker.

An applicability of quinone biomarker to the analysis of hillslope runoff was investigated. At first, quinone profiles of three streams as well as a hillslope runoff in a forested headwater catchment were compared. The quinone composition of hillslope runoff differed from others. Moreover, there were remarkable differences in quinone profile of hillslope runoff under different rainfall conditions. Then, the behavior of quinone biomarker during the increase and decrease of hillslope runoff after a rainfall event was examined. The fractional changes in Q-9 (H2), Q-10 (H2), Q-11, MK-6 and MK-10 suggested the effect of interflow.     

Photoreactivation of Escherichia coli following medium-pressure ultraviolet disinfection and its control using chloramination.

Ultraviolet (UV) disinfection is becoming increasingly popular as an alternative disinfection technology to chlorination in recent years. In this study, we investigated the photoreactivation of Escherichia coli following medium-pressure (MP) UV disinfection of synthetic water by a bench-scale collimated beam apparatus. The UV doses ranged from 1.6 -19.7 mWs/cm2 and photoreactivation was investigated for 6 hours under fluorescent light. In addition, chloramination was applied after UV disinfection to investigate its ability to control photoreactivation. It was found that photoreactivation occurred for all UV doses tested and the increase in bacteria numbers ranged from 0.04 to 1.35 log10. However, the degree of photoreactivation decreased with increased UV doses. Chloramination experiments revealed that the addition of 0.5 mg/l of monochloramine resulted in suppression of photoreactivation for 1 hour only. An increased monochloramine dose of 1 mg/l was found to prevent photoreactivation for the entire duration of the experiment. The results of this study have shown that photoreactivation occurs even after MP UV disinfection, although it is of a lesser extent at higher UV doses. This study has also established that secondary chloramination can effectively suppress and eliminate photoreactivation with a chloramine dose of 1 mg/l.     

Hydrogen limitation--a method for controlling the performance of membrane biofilm reactor for autotrophic denitrification of wastewater.

Hydrogen-driven denitrification using the fiber membrane biofilm reactor (MBfR) was evaluated for consistent operation in tertiary wastewater treatment. The possibility of controlling the process rates, as well as biofilm parameters by supplying limited amounts of electron donor (hydrogen), was tested. Limiting the hydrogen supply proved to be efficient in controlling the biofilm growth and performance of the MBfR. Denitrification rates remained unchanged for both synthetic wastewater (SWW) and real municipal wastewater (MWW) effluent as well through the fluctuations in the substrate (NO3-N) concentration. The average denitrification rates were 0.50 (+/- 0.02) g NO3-N per day per m2 for SWW and 0.59 (+/- 0.04) g NO3-N per day per m2 for MWW. Biofilm density rather than thickness was the determining factor in substrate diffusion and biofilm sloughing, ultimately determining operating stability. Limited hydrogen supply assured constant volatile solids (VS) concentration in the biofilm. It was determined that VS/TS ratio higher than 0.25 assured stable biofilm operation. Decrease of VS/TS ratio below 0.25 led to shearing of the nonbiological outer layers of the biofilm. The values of chemical oxygen demand (COD), volatile suspended solids (VSS) and total suspended solids (TSS) in the final effluent were stable and well below wastewater effluent guidelines. Substitutions of bicarbonate with gaseous carbon dioxide as the carbon source did not affect denitrification rates despite lower than optimum pH conditions.     

Using an approximate kiefer-weiss solution for testing insect population densities

Summary A sequential testing procedure called 2-SPRT for the meanμ of the negative binomial distribution with known exponentk is presented. For any fixedμ ₀(μ ₁<μ ₀<μ ₂), the 2-SPRT provides an asymptotic solution to the modified Kiefer-Weiss problem. Determination ofμ ₀ such that the test provides an approximate solution to the Kiefer-Weiss problem is described. The behavior of the 2-SPRT and the Sequential Probability Ratio Test is investigated using Monte Carlo methods. The error probabilities and the average sample numbers are compared. All the computations were carried out on the Alabama Supercomputer.