Corrugator Sheet Plant #1
A facility that made corrugated sheet board was using a specialty flocculant to treat their wastewater. Unfortunately, it treated the water only one half of the time to acceptable levels for reuse as starch makeup. The facility had paid $45,000 in the first 6 months of the year in chemical costs and $40,000 in haul-off costs to haul the majority of the treated water offsite.
Integrated Engineers, Inc. developed a process to treat starch-laden wastewater using Floccin J. The process is to adjust the pH up to 10.2 to 10.5 with caustic and add 10lbs/1,500 gallons of wastewater making clear effluent and dry filter press cakes (and eliminated the use of DE as a press pre-coat). The chemical costs for the Floccin products were less than 50% of the previous chemical supplier and all of the water was of sufficient clarity and quality for reuse. Plant savings have been over $70,000/year and zero discharge to sewer or haul off.
Corrugator Sheet Plant #2
The previous wastewater treatment was composed of the following chemicals: an acidic coagulant, caustic for pH adjustment, and an anionic polymer made down to 1% solution. The facility used 3-4 gallons of coagulant, 2-3 gallons of caustic, and 2-3 gallons of anionic flocculant (at a 1% solution). The operator stated that they had low solids, they tended to overdose which blinded the press. That required 3-4 hours to clean and restore the press to operation.
Integrated Engineers, Inc treated the water using Floccin. The operator mentioned that during the test was the worst water due to the facilities clean up operations on the weekends. The wastewater treated easily with Floccin; making a good floc with clear treated water. The dewatered filter cake was extremely dry and released well from the filter plates.
Floccin provided a significant savings for the facility, reduced the three chemicals to one, reduced labor, and provided superior finished water quality over the previous chemistry.
Industrial Laundry
This facility washes heavy industrial rags and towels from furniture manufacturing, ink roll towels, automotive and other operations. The wastewater process uses flow equalization for the 60,000 gpd flow, pH adjustment with sulfuric acid, coagulation, metal precipitation, flocculation followed by dissolved air flotation. The facility had difficulty meeting the effluent metals for Copper (1.5 ppm) and Zinc (1.0 ppm) on a consistent basis
Integrated Engineers has proven that the use of only CO2 for pH adjustment and Floccin-1105 can improve effluent water quality at a reduced cost/gallon treated.
Treating Winery Wastewater
Many smaller wineries have outgrown their septic tanks, and larger wineries have outgrown their treatment ponds, a BioReactor gives increased capacity at a fraction of the cost of conventional pond treatment systems. Wineries traditionally treat their wine process wastewater with aerobic (aerated) ponds to biologically degrade the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). The treated wastewater from these ponds needs to have a BOD of 40 ppm or less (depending on the location of the winery) before the winery can discharge the water to the vineyards for irrigation.
Winery ponds require a large surface area (detention time) to treat the winery wastewater usually between 60-90 days for conservative design. Since the ponds have a large surface area, they need to include the capacity to hold a prolonged rain based on a 10-year rainfall event.
An Alternative Solution
Instead of ponds, there is another way to degrade the BOD down to the levels required for irrigation discharge. The solution is the use of a biological returned activated sludge system also called a bioreactor. A bioreactor is a more efficient biological process than a pond system.
The BOD degradation in a bioreactor process involves a series of tanks either in ground (concrete) or above ground (steel or polyethylene). The oxygen is supplied with blowers and a fixed grid aeration system
The EQ-Blower provides pre-aeration as well as mixing to the equalization tanks with coarse bubble diffusers. The second equalization tank is for further aeration and mixing as well as the reseeding of the activated sludge from the final clarifiers.
After a detention time of 24-36 hours, the wastewater flows into the clarifier for settling of the solids forming sludge (sludge settling).
The sludge is important since it has a high concentration of the biomass (bacteria) that needs to be returned to the aeration process, hence the name `returned activated sludge`. Either system will still require an irrigation pond, but there is a significant amount of money that can be saved with a bioreactor system.
The pond system for the facility would have a comparative summary of the expenses of installing a pond treatment system, either clay or plastic lined ponds, the loss in vineyard grape production and other expenditures not usually accounted for by winery owners estimated at $363,900, while the bioreactor system resulted in a cost of $228,210, thus a savings of $135,690 or 37%.
The traditional pond systems to treat winery wastewater requires a good deal of acreage due to the long detention times required for the degradation of BOD to the levels required for irrigation. A Bioreactor can save a significant amount of capital costs, increase the wineries wastewater capacity at a fraction of the costs of conventional pond treatment methods. Existing wineries can easily adapt the Bioreactor system into their process and new wineries can greatly benefit by utilizing these advantages from the start.
