Membrane bioreactors are known for producing high quality effluent from wastewater treatment facilities in order to meet stringent regulatory requirements (Fleischer et al. 2005), accommodate growth (Vadiveloo & Cisterna 2008), provide opportunities for water reuse (Schmidt et al. 2011), and achieve other operational goals for various municipalities, utilities and industries (Cummings & Frenkel 2008). The process of testing, starting up and optimizing an MBR process for enhanced nutrient removal at the end of a construction project is often overlooked. Even a well-designed MBR can fail to meet expectations if the system is not properly configured during the startup phase, making this a critical step in any successful implementation of membrane technology. The startup phase of two municipal MBR plants were compared to demonstrate the importance of various strategies for initial process optimization, with a focus on lessons learned, techniques and performance expectations that can be applied to future projects.
Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) are known for producing high quality effluent from wastewater treatment facilities in order to meet stringent regulatory requirements (Fleischer et al., 2005), accommodate growth (Vadiveloo & Cisterna, 2008), provide opportunities for water reuse (Schmidt et al., 2011), and achieve other operational goals for various municipalities, utilities and industries (Cummings & Frenkel, 2008). The process of testing, starting up and optimizing an MBR process for enhanced nutrient removal at the end of a construction project is often overlooked. Even a well-designed MBR can fail to meet expectations if the system is not properly configured during the startup phase, making this a critical step in any successful implementation of membrane technology. The startup phase of two municipal MBR plants were compared to demonstrate the importance of various strategies for initial process optimization, with a focus on lessons learned, techniques and performance expectations that can be applied to future projects.
Providing wastewater treatment for small communities located in areas of the country with stringent effluent discharge limits can pose significant problems. The Marley Run Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) located in Huntingtown, Maryland serves the Marley Run community which consists of approximately 60 homes. The plant is a 15,000 gallons per day (gpd) facility which consists of a distribution box, primary septic tank, denitrification tank, submerged fixed film treatment, post equalization tanks and effluent pump station. The plant currently receives an average daily flow of 6,000 gallons per day. The facility has not been able to consistently meet its Groundwater Discharge permit requirements: BOD 5 of 20 mg/L and TN of 22 mg/L. An evaluation was conducted to determine the treatability of the wastewater using an activated sludge process. A sequencing batch reactor (SBR) was determined to be a cost-effective activated sludge treatment process capable of achieving the effluent discharge limits for the facility. Consequently a new SBR treatment process was implemented at the Marley Run WWTP to treat wastewater from the Marley Run community. The facility has been online since 2011 and has been performing very well, achieving the plant's discharge permit limits.
This project involves the upgrade of the 58,670 m 3 /d (15.5 mgd) Danbury, CT Water Pollution Control Plant (WPCP) to provide nitrogen removal using a creative approach that employed a modification of the Wuhrmann process, a nitrogen removal process dating back to the 1960's, that uses a post anoxic zone as the primary means to achieve nitrogen removal. Relatively low BOD and high dissolved oxygen in the influent to the WPCP's existing nitrification tanks posed a challenge to using a pre anoxic zone in a conventional MLE process modification for nitrogen removal. Moving the anoxic zone to the effluent end of the nitrification tanks (as a post anoxic zone) allowed the influent dissolved oxygen to be used for nitrification and BOD removal, eliminated the need for nitrate recycle, and the relatively low cost modification achieves lower effluent nitrogen (between 4 to 6 mg/l TN) than achievable by the MLE process.
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