• Subject Name : Engineering

Environmental Engineering Assignment

Introduction to Bubble Less Process of Waste Water Treatment

The recycling plant in Penrith serves around 100000 people and there are around 30 treatment plants in greater Sydney. The treatment of wastewater is done to a tertiary standard and the recycled water is reused for environmental flows and for watering local sporting fields. They are serviced is around 63 km2 which includes Cranbrook, glen brook, and Mt Riverview. The treated wastewater per day is around 24 million litres and the plant is operated per different set of rules by NSW protection authority and the plant must be operated under the standards of Australian guidelines for water recycling.

The treatment process includes three stages namely primary, secondary, and tertiary stages. The primary treatment removes solids and particulates through the physical separation process and almost all solids are removed and treated during the initial process. The first process involved in the screening process which uses the tap to remove excessive solids as the water flows inside. The screening process is followed by grit removal and sedimentation process (Joseph & Andrew ,2018,pp. 1-9).Through the grit removal process, the wastewater is stirred rapidly leading the water to create a vortex in the centre of the tank to separate the water. The wastewater is split into two streams one to the sedimentation tank and the other to the bioreactor. The next stage of water treatment is the sedimentation stage and in this stage, the excess solids may be settled to the bottom of the tank, and oil flows to the top of the tank. Scrapers are used at the bottom and top of the tank to remove oil grease and other solids. This is then treated to biosolids. The next stage of the treatment is the second stage in which the nutrients and other chemical particulates such as nitrogen and phosphorous are removed through a biological and chemical process.

Equation for nitrosomonas

For Nitrosomonas: 2NH4 + 3O2 ’ 2NO2 - + 2H2 O + 4H + new cells

For Nitrobacter: 2NO2 - + O2 ’ 2NO3 - + new cells

High concentration microorganisms are added to the wastewater which is known as the activated sludge process. This is done to break down the nutrients and clarify the scrapers accordingly. Here the treated water is then allowed to flow for the tertiary process. The tertiary process involves chemical mixing filtration and disinfection methods. IDAL is the most effective treatment process which reduces the effluents through the biological process and the main process involved in tertiary treatment starts from flash mixing. In flash mixing the wastewater is pumped to a flash mixer in which alum is added as a coagulant to remove the additional phosphorous. Solid particles are coagulated to form flocs that are easier to be removed in deep sand filters. The wastewater which is missed is fed into six seep sand filters to trap the flocs which have an area of 450 square meters and the current plant can filter 35.6 ML/d on an average. The trapped floc from filter beds can be removed by the process of backwashing every 24 hours which is returned to the primary treatment process. The last stage in the tertiary stage is the disinfection process. In the disinfection process, the chlorine is added to kill the microorganisms including bacteria and viruses. Chlorine is an oxidant which has disinfection property. (Joseph & Andrew ,2018,pp. 1-9).

Sludge Treatment Process

At Penrith wastewater treatment plant the sludge collected from the IDAL process or biological reactor needs to be eradicated for a good amount of microorganisms. At Penrith, the treatment process for sludge includes aerobic digestion process along with thickening and followed by dewatering process. The sludge from the treatment tank is fed into a floatation tank where very small bubbles are pressurized and the air is injected below to activate the process through the inlet. The remain is lifted and scraped from the top of the tank to put some aerobic digesters. Other effluents are remained underneath and returned to treatment tanks. Amount of sludge treated in an aerobic digester shall be reduced. By the process of aerobic digestion, here an aerobic digester is an oxygen-rich tank and the organic matter is the partial breakdown. The stabilization process helps in reducing pathogens and organic materials. The stabilized sludge is known as bio solids. The bio solids from the digesters are only a small percentage of solids and the liquid sludge is sent to a high-speed centrifuge to reduce the excess moisture (Albert&Simon,2019,pp31-39).

Comparison of Bubble Less Process of Waste Water Treatment

For comparison, a wastewater treatment plant in Algeria is considered which has an off-grid container and is a 2 module packaging plant. The grid location may be easy to deploy the modular system with an efficient energy process. BOD removal and effluent quality are to be considered with great importance and the capacity of the treatment system may be increased if required. There should not be any usage of chemicals in the wastewater treatment process (Krishna & Jansen, 2016,pp:17-23). Hence the process is a robust treatment process. The big challenge of the company was to deliver an easy and maintainable method. Here a module is used inside the system to provide a cost-effective solution for wastewater treatment. OxyMem MABR system is used in Algeria by the Red Med group which makes use of biology biofilm and bubble less aeration technique to treat the wastewater and reduce the operation and maintenance cost of treatment. Bubble less aeration is the technique used for treating the wastewater which reduces the energy requirements and off-grid powering of the reactor is also possible. This is a self-powered wastewater treatment process that can be used tremendously for municipal and industrial wastewater. Here the ordinary activated sludge process is compared with the bubbles aeration process which consumes less energy and electricity compared to a conventional activated sludge process (Krishna & Jansen, 2016,pp:17-23).

Conclusion on Bubble Less Process of Waste Water Treatment

The importance of a wastewater system was recognized in ancient times as domestic settlements and farms use wastewater for successive crop yields. The modern methods for wastewater shall be energy and cost-efficient to treat both municipal and industrial wastewaters. The predominantly employed wastewater system is a conventional activated sludge system. This approach wastes around 70 % of energy and 3 % of electric production. The size of the activated sludge system is also fixed which causes heavy charges for the installation of a wastewater treatment process. The conventional aeration system may be swapped with bubble less aeration techniques which helps In handling the flexibility issues and the bubble less treatment saves energy up to 7 times compared to the conventional technique.

References for Bubble Less Process of Waste Water Treatment

Albert Sineoula, Simon Carluo,2019.’New waste water treating techniques : A case study’, Industrial Journal of Waste water engineering,121(12),pp :31-39.

Bal Krishna KC, Aryal A, Jansen T,2016. ‘Comparative study of ground water treatment plants sludges to remove phosphorous from wastewater’. Journal of Environmental Management,151(1), pp.17-23.

Joseph Alex, Andrew Simon,2018.’Bubble less process of waste water treatment’,Environmental Engineering Journal,201(1),pp :1-9.

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