Engineering Commons^™

Production And Harvest Of Microalgae In Wastewater Raceways With Resource Recycling, Alexander Colin Roberts

Master's Theses

Microalgae can be grown on municipal wastewater media to both treat the wastewater and produce feedstock for algae biofuel production. However the reliability of treatment must be demonstrated, as well as high areal algae productivity on recycled wastewater media and efficient sedimentation harvesting. This processes was studied at pilot scale in the present research.

A pilot facility was operated with nine CO₂-supplemented raceway ponds, each with a 33-m² surface area and a 0.3-m depth, continuously from March 6, 2013 through September 24, 2014. The ponds were operated as three sets of triplicates with two sets continuously fed …

Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactors To Treat Municipal Wastewater At Ambient Temperatures, Matthew D. Seib

Dissertations (1934 -)

Anaerobic biotechnology is viewed as a sustainable alternative to aerobic biotechnology for municipal wastewater recovery. However, anaerobic processes have not been successful in cold climates. Past examples have not been able to meet low organic effluent concentrations, or have failed due to biomass washout resulting from low temperature operation and short hydraulic residence time. Recently, the anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) has been shown to achieve low effluent organic concentrations and maintain stable anaerobic biomass. However, shortcomings have included high energy demands for membrane operation and poor understanding of microbial community structures within AnMBRs. This dissertation describes efforts to improve AnMBRs …

Evaluation Of Filtration Performance Of A Rotating Belt Filter For Different Primary Wastewater Influents., Tulip Chakraborty

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Human activities around the world are responsible for production of enormous amount of wastewater, which needs to be treated quickly and effectively to avoid environmental concerns and other health implications. As an alternative to primary settlers in treating municipal wastewater, Salsnes, a subsidiary company of Trojan Technologies offers rotating belt filters (RBF) to treat the wastewater. A bench scale filtration unit of the RBF was developed to investigate the effect of varying water qualities from several wastewater plants in London, Ontario on the performance of the filter. The unit can achieve up to 80% reduction in total suspended solids (TSS), …

Process Control For Biological Nutrient Removal Processes In Fluidized Beds Treating Low Carbon To Nitrogen Municipal Wastewater, Joseph Donohue

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Conventional wastewater treatment techniques - utilizing microorganisms to remove organics and nutrients (i.e. nitrogen and phosphorus) from a water stream and partially incorporate them into their cell structure - struggle to adapt with increased urbanization due to land and infrastructure requirements. The circulating fluidized-bed bioreactor (CFBBR) was developed as a way to provide biological treatment in an urbanized area by cultivating high-density bacteria on an inert media. The technology operates as a pre-anoxic nitrification/denitrification wastewater treatment process. The system is initially loaded with media, providing a platform for microbial growth. Internal recycle streams in the system provide the energy to …

The Effects Of Algae Pre-Treatment On The Biomethane Potential Of Swine Wastewater, Joe Barrett Carter

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Anaerobic digestion is a common method of waste treatment in the agro-industrial and municipal sectors, which utilizes microbial metabolisms that take place in an environment closed to the atmosphere to convert the organic content of wastewater into gas composed of approximately 65% methane and 35% carbon dioxide. This gas can be used as a combustible fuel for the production of heat and/or electricity. Anaerobic digestion is not typically used to treat swine waste because of its low carbon to nitrogen ratio being below the ideal range of 20-30:1. This high nitrogen content of swine waste results in ammonia inhibition of …

The Use Of Cod, Toc, Fluorescence, And Absorbance Spectroscopy To Estimate Biochemical Oxygen Demand In Wastewater, Evelyn Aramaine Christian

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

All wastewater treatment facilities must obtain a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit, which regulates the quality of water that is discharged. Common to all NPDES permits is a limit on organic matter, as determined by the five-day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) test. More rapid methods, such as chemical oxygen demand (COD), total organic carbon (TOC), fluorescence, and absorbance spectroscopy are also capable of quantifying organic matter. Previous studies indicate it is possible to develop correlations between these parameters. This study explored the correlations using influent, primary clarifier effluent, and finished effluent samples from an operational wastewater treatment plant …

Recovery Of Nutrient Nitrogen From Municipal Wastewater Residuals By Gas Membrane Separation, Evelyn Rios

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There are relatively high amounts of ammonia returned to the headworks of a municipal wastewater plant that are extracted from the dewatering process. This ammonia load contributes to a significant oxygen demand in the secondary treatment, requiring greater air blower energy costs. This goal of this research was to evaluate the feasibility of the recovery of an ammonium sulfate product from belt press filtrate. The objectives of this research were to: (1) analyze wastewater treatment average monthly data flows and constituents with respect to ammonia nitrification, (2) the evaluate the technical performance of a two sage gas-separation membrane for recovering …