Bacterial Resource Management for Nutrient Removal in Aerobic Granular Sludge Wastewater Treatment Systems
Event details
| Date | 19.03.2013 |
| Hour | 16:15 › 17:15 |
| Speaker | Dr David Weissbrodt, LBE |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Rapid (urban) population growth and extensive water demand have led to key challenges for the security and sustainability of the water chain. The approach of wastewater treatment has shifted towards a holistic view in order to achieve sustainability in addition to environmental protection. The public attention currently focuses on the impact and elimination of xenobiotic micropollutants. However, the removal (and/or recovery) of carbonaceous, nitrogenous, and phosphorous nutrients from wastewater is linked to significant costs. Optimal removal of nutrients is also required prior to the treatment of micropollutants. The aerobic granular sludge technology, which relies on the use of self-aggregated, mobile, and fast-settling ‘spherical’ biofilms called “granules”, is progressively becoming a new standard for high-rate biological nutrient removal and secondary clarification in single sequencing-batch reactors. This intensive process has been related with definite savings in land area (75%), construction (20%), and operation costs (20%). Theoretical economical savings of up to CHF 0.45 per m3 of wastewater were estimated here, i.e. up to CHF 6 mio per annum for a wastewater treatment plant of 200’000 capita (1 CHF ~ 0.83 €). Besides process implementation at full scale, mechanisms of selection and self-immobilization of microbial populations as granular biofilm architectures have risen fundamental interest. In the present research, the mechanisms of bacterial selection and association in aerobic granular sludge were investigated in a system approach at the interface between environmental biotechnology, process engineering, multifactorial design, mixed culture biofilms, microscopy, molecular microbial ecology, bioinformatics, multivariate statistics, and mathematical modeling. Overall, this study led to the definition of a sound methodology with strategic axes for efficient management of the bacterial resource for granulation and nutrient removal in intensified wastewater treatment systems using aerobic granular sludge biofilms.
Links
Practical information
- General public
- Free
- This event is internal
Organizer
- IIE
Contact
- Prof. Christof Holliger, LBE