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IMPROVING INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT PROCESS RELIABILITY TO ENHANCE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Citation:
Oerther, D. B., J M. Simpson*, P. G. Stroot, R. Butler, S. Gelman, I. Beydilli, AND S. Dudley. IMPROVING INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT PROCESS RELIABILITY TO ENHANCE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. Presented at 2002 National Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, New Orleans, LA, 3/10-14/2002.
Description:
Sustainable development includes the recovery of resources from industrial manufacturing processes. One valuable resource that can often be purified and reused is process wastewater. Typically, pollutants are removed from process wastewater using physical, chemical, and biological treatment systems. One of the most common biological treatment systems used to clean wastewater is suspended growth activated sludge wastewate treatment. Activated sludge wastewater treatment has been employed for nearly a century to remove soluble and particulate organic pollution from municipal wastewater. When activated sludge wastewater treatment is adapted for the treatment of wastewater from industrial manufacturing processes, unanticipated difficulties can arise. For the successful operation of an activated sludge wastewater treatment system particulate biomass and particulate solids must be separated from the liquid stream. Often, this separation is conducted in a quiescent tank reactor known as a secondary clarified. Biomass and solids are separated from the liquid stream by gravity sedimentation. The objective of this study was to identify microbial causes of poor biomass and solids separation for an activated sludge system treating an industrial manufacturing wastewater. Novel techniques for culture-independent identification and enumeration of microorganisms were used to detemine the predominant microbial populations in samples from the influent of the activated sludge treatment process, from within the activated sludge treatment process, and from the effluent of the activated sludge treatment process.