A new biological process for ammonia removal from flows containing hundreds to thousands milligrams NH+4 per litre has been developed at the Delft University of Technology. The SHARON process operates at a high temperature (30–40 °C) and pH (7–8). The process is performed without sludge retention. This enables the prevention of nitrite oxidation, leading to lower operational costs. Denitrification is used to control the pH. A full scale plant was designed (1500 m3) based on kinetic and stoichiometric parameters determined at 1.5 1. scale and model predictions. Total costs are estimated at about $1.7 per kg removed NH4+-N. The first full scale SHARON plant will be operational at the Dokhaven waste water treatment plant in Rotterdam in the beginning of 1998. This contribution focuses on the principles of the process and evaluates conditions for which application seems feasible.

A new process for biological nitrification was developed that is operated in a single aerated reactor at relatively high temperature and pH. This process, termed SHARON, was designed to achieve substantial ammonia conversion at high reaction rates for relatively concentrated flows, rather than to meet strict effluent standards. First large scale applications that are under construction now, aim at treating reject water from a sludge digestion unit. The SHARON process operates without sludge retention, and ammonium oxidation is stopped at nitrite, which saves on aeration costs. Denitrification is used as a cheap means to control the pH. Under typical conditions, no heating is necessary due to the heat production by the reactions. Overall processing costs are less than 50% of other techniques. This contribution focuses on model development for process design calculations at full scale. Underlying kinetic principles, and especially their pH dependency, are highlighted as well.

Measurements provide the basis for process monitoring and control as well as for model development and validation. Systematic approaches to increase the accuracy and credibility of the empirical data set are therefore of great value. In (bio)chemical conversions, linear conservation relations such as the balance equations for charge, enthalpy, and/or chemical elements, can be employed to relate conversion rates. In a pactical situation, some of these rates will be measured (in effect, be calculated directly from primary measurements of, e.g., concentrations and flow rates), as others can or cannot be calculated from the measured ones. When certain measured rates can also be calculated from other measured rates, the set of equations, the accuracy and credibility of the measured rates can indeed be improved by, respectively, balancing and gross error diagnosis. The balanced conversion rates are more accurate, and form a consistent set of data, which is more suitable for further application (e.g., to calculate nonmeasured rates) than the raw measurements. Such an approach has drawn attention in previous studies. The current study deals mainly with the problem of mathematically classifying the conversion rates into balanceable and calculable rates, given the subset of measured rates. The significance of this problem is illustrated with some examples. It is shown that a simple matrix equation can be derived that contains the vector of measured conversion rates and the redundancy matrix R. Matrix R plays a predominant role in the classification problem. In supplementary articles, significance of the redundancy matrix R for an improved gross error diagnosis approach will be shown. In addition, efficient equations have been derived to calculate the balanceable and/or calculable rates. The method is completely based on matrix algebra (principally different from the graph-theoretical approach), and it is easily implemented into a computer program. (c) 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Conservation equations derived from elemental balances, heat balances, and metabolic stoichiometry, can be used to constrain the values of conversion rates of relevant components. In the present work, their use will be discussed for detection and localization of significant errors of the following types: 1.At least one of the primary measurements has a significant error (gross measurement error).2.The system definition is incorrect: a component a.is not included in the system description.b.has a composition different from that specified.3.The specified variances are too small, resulting in a too-sensitive test.The error diagnosis technique presented here, is based on the following: given the conservation equations, for each set of measured rates, a vector of residuals of these equations can be constructed, of which the direction is related to the error source, as its length is a measure of the error size. The similarity of the directions of such a residual vector and certain compare vectors, each corresponding to a specific error source, is considered in a statistical test. If two compare vectors that result from different error sources have (almost) the same direction, errors of these types cannot be distinguished from each other. For each possible error in the primary measurements of flows and concentrations, the compare vector can be constructed a priori, thus allowing analysis beforehand, which errors can be observed. Therefore, the detectability of certain errors likely to occur can be insured by selecting a proper measurement set. The possibility of performing this analysis before experiments are carried out is an important advantage, providing a profound understanding of the detectability of errors. The characteristics of the method with respect to diagnosis of simultaneous errors and error size estimation are discussed and compared to those of the serial elimination method and the serial compensation strategy, published elsewhere. (c) 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

At the Rotterdam Dokhaven WWTP the first full-scale application of the SHARON process has been constructed. In the SHARON process, rejection water from dewatering of digested sludge is treated for N-removal. It concerns a highly active process operating without sludge retention. The single tank reactor is intermittently aerated. Due to differences in growth rate nitrite oxidisers are washed out of the system while ammonia oxidisers can be maintained, resulting in N-removal over nitrite. The SHARON process has been selected after comparison with several other techniques. The feed of the SHARON tank is concentrated, with ammonia concentrations over 1 g N/l. The first results show that conversion rates of 90% are quite possible with N-removal mainly via the nitrite route. The process was shown to be stable. Due to the high inlet concentrations pH control is of great importance, preventing process inhibitions. The acidifying effect of nitrification can be compensated completely by CO2 stripping during aeration and by denitrification. Heat production by biological conversions appeared to be significant, due to the high inlet concentrations, and contributes to the optimal operating temperature of 30-40 degrees C.