At Mill Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) in Cincinnati, several on-site TSS and blanket probes from various vendors have been evaluated and tested to assess technologies for real time monitoring of the performance of the secondary treatment process. The primary goal of this pilot project was to identify the technologies required to reduce process variation and increase stability of the treatment process. Achieving these goals will in turn help to improve sludge quality and downstream processes, as well as to gain additional treatment capacity and improve effluent quality. During sensor evaluation, a detailed screening matrix was developed to help aid the selection of testing units, and Hach and YSI was the two brands that continued for further field testing. Based on the trial results, both HACH and YSI TSS meters worked well to provide real time monitoring for the secondary aeration, while blanket meter measurement devices need further trialing.
The deammonification technology process, combining partial nitritation and anammox, has been studied and demonstrated for treating high nitrogen streams with low C/N ratios for 20 years. In this study, a bench-scale feasibility study was conducted to validate the two ANITA MOx configurations (MBBR and IFAS) to treat landfill leachate. Since old leachate consists of significantly higher COD, for both systems, a carbon removal stage (a MBBR reactor with clarifier) was added before the ANITA Mox stage for both configurations to ensure that the feed into the ANITA Mox stage contained low biodegradable COD concentration. The results showed that both systems were capable of removing COD and nitrogen from old leachate at SRRs of 15 g/m 2 /d for COD and 1.0 g/m 2 /d for nitrogen. The COD removal from C-stage is 75%, and the total inorganic nitrogen (TIN) removal rate from MBBR system is 74% respectively. The MBBR test has been very successful and meets the design criteria from the vendor perspective. The relatively unstable performance from IFAS was caused by many factors. Compared with reject water from dewatering anaerobic digested sludge, the SRR was lower due to the toxic chemicals present in the landfill leachate.
In order to improve water quality and reduce human health risks associated with harmful bacteria, Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati (MSDGC) collaborated with University of Cincinnati have developed innovative molecular tools for microbial source tracking and identify what are the major contributors are and how to manage it in a watershed level. The results presented in this study showed that microbial source tracking is very useful to identify the major pollution contributors to the impairment of Little Miami River and further guide the development of CSO strategies for the actual field work and the subsequent data analysis for a baseline bioassessment. One of the most important findings of the study was the absence of pathogenic organisms such as Escherichia coli O157:H7 from the water samples collected from all the sampling sites. In addition, the study showed a multiple set of biomarkers are needed to understand fully the watershed condition.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.