WEF Odor and Air Pollutant Conference will be in Louisville April 15-18
This year's Odors and Air Pollutants Conference will bring together environmental professionals from the technical and regulated communities to discuss state-of-the-art techniques for the assessment and control of odors and air pollutants while promoting the use and acceptance of effective innovative technologies. The conference will cater to the following technical session topics:

Conference Brochure (PDF)

At the time you receive this, the Residuals and Biosolids conference will be in full swing in Raleigh North Carolina. But you still have an option for obtaining the extensive information which is being provided by the speakers.  The proceedings are available for $115 to non members:  http://wef.org

Air Products has signed a joint research and development (R&D agreement with South China University of Technology (SCUT) on water purification technology.  The collaboration between Air Products and the Water Research Group of the School of Environmental Science and Engineering of SCUT will focus on the development of a flexible and effective bioreactor resulting from the integration of ozone reaction and biological aerated filter (BAF) technologies. The technologies and solutions developed will be applied to various water and wastewater treatment areas including industrial wastewater treatment and reuse.

BioShaft Water Technology has been awarded several industrial and domestic contracts to install wastewater treatment and recycling systems in the Middle East, including two for its Turbo Moving Bed Bio-Reactor (T-MBBR).

BioShaft said that the system requires about 50 percent less energy than conventional treatment facilities and its underground installation requires less land use and also can operate under extreme temperatures.  The T-MBBR system treats flows from small populations or large-scale municipal sewage works by varying turbine depth and diameter. The system uses a moving bed of bio-film carriers that collect very high biomass concentrations, the website said.

The process reduces biological sludge production and cuts inorganic solids to less than 50 percent by eliminating all suspended bacterial presence in the bioreactor, BioShaft says.

While a conventional suspended growth system requires large aeration and sedimentation tank volumes, the T-MBBR significantly reduces these volumes by using biomass carriers with a high specific surface area. The organic loading rates achieved significantly exceed those of conventional activated sludge wastewater treatment systems and intensify the mitigation process.

The state is not likely to back down from phosphorus removal requirements that could cost millions of dollars, according to area municipal officials.

The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection says phosphorus is harmful to aquatic life and is trying to reduce the amount released into the Quinnipiac River by municipal wastewater treatment plants. The department is proposing a limit on the amount of phosphorus discharged from wastewater treatment plants in the Quinnipiac River Basin.

Officials from Meriden, Wallingford, Southington and Cheshire met recently with DEEP Commissioner Daniel Esty to argue for less stringent limits.

The state has indicated that the phosphorus limits will be set at 0.2 parts phosphorus per million. State officials argued that a 0.7 parts per million is much more financially realistic.

The four communities in the Quinnipiac River Basin are among the first in the state to face new DEEP phosphorus limits, encouraged by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

According to Southington Town Manager Garry Brumback, the phosphorus target of 0.2 parts per million would cost the town $20 million to $30 million. A level of 0.7 parts per million could be achieved at a cost of $50,000.

Wallingford Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr., said upgrading the Wallingford wastewater treatment plant to meet DEEP requirements could cost from $15 million to $60 million. He said funding a project of that size would mean tax and rate increases.

Over 46 percent of Ireland's municipal wastewater treatment plants are failing to achieve national and EU standards, according to a report released by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  The survey also found that plants in 11 urban areas did not even provide secondary treatment, as required by the EU's Urban Water Directive.  EPA's program manager Gerard O'Leary said it "still shocks me when you do the number-crunching" on the extent of noncompliance. 

The survey is the first review of the operation of wastewater treatment plants in all 529 urban areas since the plants became subject to a new licensing program.  The report was released to coincide with a public consultation on plans to set up a new state agency, Irish Water, which would take charge of all water services. 

Southern Water has initiated a £300 million (US$475 million) environmental project at its Peacehaven Wastewater Treatment Works in Sussex.  Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies will provide a major new process plant with a capacity of 95 million liters/day (25 MGD) using its MultifloT lamella clarifiers for primary treatment and Biostyr^® process for biological secondary treatment. 

Peacehaven will have the first MultifloT lamella system in the UK which incorporates both automatic lamella plate cleaning and an automatic scum removal system.   A battery of ten Biostyr^® biological aerated flooded filters will remove COD and BOD, as well as eliminate suspended solids and particulate pollutants.  Following hydraulic testing and dry commissioning, the first flow to the new works is scheduled for Spring 2012 with final completion by the end of March 2013.  The project is being carried out by 4Delivery, which is a consortium including Veolia Water, Costain and MWH.

Severn Trent Services has been awarded a framework agreement by Thames Water to supply TETRA NSAF tertiary ammonia removal systems plants for Thames Water's five-year capital program.  Severn Trent will provide the design, manufacture, installation and commissioning of wastewater treatment packaged plants under the contract.

TETRA NSAF uses an upflow, fixed-film biological process which is flexible and available in a range of sizes, from small modular units suitable for above or below ground construction to custom-made configurations for large plants.  The technology can be combined with various solids removal processes or enable direct discharge of the effluent depending on individual site circumstances.  Severn Trent's technology has been previously supplied to Thames Water for wastewater treatment projects in Waddesdon, Culworth and Byfield. 

The YSI IQ SensorNet 2020 XT is a modular water quality system for a complete sensor network ideal for various installation needs. The modular system can accept additional sensors easily at any time. This is a powerful system to continuously measure water quality parameters anywhere in a facility for process control.

Immediate benefits include better network visibility and management, early detection of network failures, improved compliance with regulatory targets and cost savings (energy, pump/blower maintenance, and labor).

The system is capable of measuring:

• Dissolved oxygen (optical or electrochemical)
• pH
• ORP
• Conductivity
• Temperature
• Turbidity - ultrasonic cleaning
• TSS (total suspended solids) - ultrasonic cleaning
• Ammonium
• Nitrate
• Potassium
• COD (chemical oxygen demand) - ultrasonic cleaning
• TOC (total organic carbon) - ultrasonic cleaning
• DOC (dissolved organic carbon share of TOC) - ultrasonic cleaning
• SAC (spectral absorption coefficient) - ultrasonic cleaning
• BOD (biochemical oxygen demand) - ultrasonic cleaning

The entire system accommodates up to 20 sensors for the above listed parameters in any combination. Any sensor can also be changed out at any time without re-wiring if another parameter is needed. Simply change sensors (parameters) and start getting data for the new parameter.

Bids Solicited for US$1.8 Billion Umm Al Hayman Wastewater Project

The Partnerships Technical Bureau (PTB) in Kuwait has officially launched the Umm Al Hayman Wastewater Project, issuing a request for expressions of interest from the private sector.  The plant will have an initial capacity of 500,000 m³/day (130 MGD), rising to 700,000 m³/day (185 MGD) by 2020.  The US$1.8 billion project will increase wastewater treatment capacity in the southern region of Kuwait by a factor of 20, and benefit over 1.25 million people.

The Umm Al-Hayman project will be the second water and wastewater sector initiative to be developed in Kuwait under a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model, where the plant will be built, financed, owned and operated in partnership with private sector companies.  The Partnerships Technical Bureau (PTB) was created by the Kuwaiti government in 2008 to manage private sector participation in the expansion of the country's infrastructure.

Frankfurt's two wastewater treatment plants and one sludge treatment plant handle wastewater from both Frankfurt itself (a city of 672,000 people) and a number of adjacent municipalities in the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main metropolitan region.

One of the city's treatment plants, the Sindlingen facility, began testing a new disinfection method developed by Kemira - DesinFix - to improve its performance and as a potential replacement for chlorine dioxide in spring 2010. The initial aim was to generate service water clean enough for off-gas scrubbing and diluting polymers, both processes that call for huge amounts of water and represent ideal opportunities for improving water use efficiency.

During the trial, the city decided to up the ante and set the required level of disinfection to match the EU's upcoming bathing directive. Although the directive only applies to outgoing water, the city reasoned that it represents a reasonable target for internal process water as well.

In practice, the city's goal is to reduce the levels of Enterococci and E. coli bacteria to the levels required in the new directive.

The heart of the DesinFix system, DEX-135®, is produced on-site in a process that generates only two by-products: water and carbon dioxide.

As elsewhere, the results of the Frankfurt trial confirmed that DEX-135 destroys Enterococci and E. coli very effectively, even more effectively than chlorine dioxide in fact. It costs less as well. DesinFix also has other two advantages over chlorine: it does not increase water salt content and is less corrosive. The DesinFix system is also easy to install and can be used wherever water needs to be disinfected.

Although the Sindlingen wastewater treatment plant does not need to meet the requirements of the EU's new bathing water directive, which will come into effect in 2015, the results of the trial show that the dosages used in the DesinFix system are more than sufficient to make water suitable for bathing.

Long-term results from other plants confirm that the requirements of the directive can be met very reliably using the new technology, which means that it could prove very useful in treating the large volumes of wastewater that municipalities everywhere are faced with before returning water to rivers and lakes.

Why send treated wastewater long distances to golf courses or other parks? With sewer mining one can extract the sewage, separate and purify some of the water and discharge the remaining sewage back into the pipe. Ovio has packaged membrane bioreactor systems which can accomplish this.

The Ovivo deployable membrane bioreactor (MBR) wastewater treatment system is contained within a standard 20-foot shipping container which allows for easy transport from site to site. The unit is suitable for applications such as: mining sites, construction sites, hotels and resorts, boat marinas, sports and leisure venues, caravan parks, sewer mining and black water treatment.

It provides solids-liquid separation, producing a high-quality, fully disinfected effluent which can be used for non-potable re-use applications.

This plant uses a flat sheet membrane system to produce an effluent that is suitable for discharge to the most sensitive receiving waters. The process employs simple flat sheet membrane panels housed in stainless steel cases and aerated by a coarse bubble diffuser system. A series of these membranes are submerged within an activated sludge treatment tank.

An advantage of this design is that the membrane panels are securely retained and cannot touch or abrade each other, while the cases also act as a flume to ensure effective tank mixing and even distribution of the biomass.

The membrane panels, manufactured with a pore size of 0.08 microns, in operation become covered by a dynamic layer of protein and cellular material. This further enhances the performance effectiveness of the filtration process by providing an effective pore size of less than 0.01 microns.

The raw sewage generally only requires screening (to 3 mm in 2d) and de-gritting prior to entering the membrane bioreactor tank. The process requires no primary or secondary settlement stages and no additional tertiary treatment or UV stages to achieve quality typically better than 5:5:5 mg/L BOD: Suspended Solids: Ammonia.

Advantages include: it does not remove the solids by settlement, therefore the biomass can operate at very high levels of MLSS, generally in the order of 12,000 mg/L; and this high concentration enables a low-tank volume and a long sludge age to be used, which reduces sludge production and allows a small footprint.

The maximum hydraulic flow determines the required number of membrane units. Each membrane unit may contain membrane panels housed within a rectangular case, together with an integral aeration system in the bottom section of the unit. Treated effluent is removed from the membrane units using rotary lobe pumps.

The membrane air diffuser typically allows 3-6% uptake of available oxygen at 3.3 to 3.5 m water depth, dependent on temperature and initial dissolved oxygen levels. Higher uptake rates will be found at lower temperatures and where the influent is initially anoxic.

Aeration is continuous at all times when permeate is flowing through the membrane units. During periods of low influent flow when the permeate flow stops, the aeration blowers can be cut out and will re-start automatically upon permeate flow resuming.

Worldwide revenues for reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration and microfiltration equipment and replacement modules will exceed $9.3 billion in 2012. This is the latest finding in the online report RO, UF, MF World Market published by the McIlvaine Company. (www.mcilvainecompany.com)

Chemical                                             407

Desalination                                      2,570

Food                                                    247

Metals                                                  325

Mining                                                 107

Oil & Gas                                            111

Other Industries                                   691

Pharmaceutical                                    845

Power                                                  748

Pulp & Paper                                       229

Refining                                               109

Residential/Commercial                       698

                                            Semiconductor                                     237

Wastewater                                          341

Water                                                1,701

Total                                                 9,366

Desalination will be the leading segment and will account for 27 percent of the revenues. The Middle East will account for 26 percent of the total desalination revenues. Asia is gaining on other regions for two reasons.  One is the lack of uncontaminated water and the second is the growth in demand due to industry expansion.

The Asian power plant owners will account for more than 40 percent of the cross-flow membrane equipment purchases by the world's electrical generating industry. This is due to the substantial investment in new coal-fired power plants in China, India and other Asian countries. The majority of the purchases of cross-flow equipment and modules for the pharmaceutical industry will be by manufacturers in Europe and the U.S.

Wastewater reuse is becoming increasingly popular. Membrane bioreactors provide a cost effective way to combine biological treatment with efficient membrane particle removal. The concept of sewer mining in conjunction with membrane bioreactors minimizes the transport problem for water reuse for golf courses and similar grey water classifications. The present market is only $341 million/yr for membranes in wastewater but the growth will be at double-digit rates for the next five years.

Microfiltration and ultrafiltration continue to make inroads in the municipal drinking water industry. Traditionally sand filters have been used for drinking water purification. But membranes remove more microbes and make water safer.

For more information on RO, UF, MF World Market, click on: http://www.mcilvainecompany.com/brochures/water.html#no20       

Here are the headlines in the biweekly updates to the McIlvaine North American Municipal Wastewater Treatment Facilities and People http://www.mcilvainecompany.com/brochures/water.html#62ei