There is a manifest precariousness that we record daily in the analysis of projects and treatment plants in operation, as well as the frequent but fundamentally erroneous conception of declaring the work finished once the construction of the effluent treatment plant is finished.
Treatability tests in their different forms, for example laboratory tests and prototypes, minireactors and pilot plants, predict how the Treatment Plant will work, all this before its construction and investment obviously.
Before designing an Industrial Effluent Treatment Plant, treatability tests must be carried out
In any case, it will be a good decision to start by remembering that the work of converting the dissolved organic material or substrate is carried out by microorganisms and not by machines such as aerators, biodiscs, etc.
As a result of this observation we will have the following questions to consider:
for aerobic applications using relatively short aeration/biomass residence times (we have seen up to 10 minutes!) we will have air but no microorganisms;
the determination of oxygen requirements may be wrong; hold your breath for five minutes; Why do you think some microorganisms can do it?
design or operation with insufficient power densities may not achieve adequate mixing levels for the unit process in question, be it aerated from the equalization, the main reactor itself, or the polishing blocks or lagoons; each block has its recommended power density levels, it may happen that we have air but very low or insufficient interaction between the constituents of interest, microorganisms, substrate, nutrients, oxygen.
practically all the unitary processes involved require a uniform feeding, be it from the hydraulic point of view or organic load; the lack of foresight at this point, irregularity in the charges or the absence or deficiency of the equalizer can cause a severe disorder in the biological process, even interrupting it in some cases.
uniform or non-uniform, biological populations also have their limits, it is not possible to send high levels of organic load to the biological reactor with the risk of paralyzing biological activity.
incomplete characterization and therefore flawed design of the plant by not carrying out an adequate evaluation of the constituents present in the tributary. By way of example, an effluent treatment plant design based exclusively on the magnitude of BOD5 may be susceptible to low performance due to spontaneous nitrification and other complications.
Today we can carry out in our laboratories from simple studies or discontinuous tests, lasting a few hours, to complex studies using continuous reactors (at laboratory scale) extending for longer periods and testing several different scenarios.
Once the results of the treatability test have been obtained, we will be able to design or adapt the Treatment Plant to improve the quality of our final effluent.
We have vast experience in Treatability Testing and subject matter experts who can help you solve Treatment Plant problems.