Biological Nutrient Removal for Municipal Wastewater Treatment

As more and more municipalities are imposed with stringent Nutrient discharge limits for their wastewater treatment facilities, achieving lowest possible nitrogen and phosphorus within urban environmental set up is a challenge.

Conventional suspended growth based technologies like extended aeration or SBR require very large reactor volumes and very high MCRTs. The larger reactor volume requirement for these technologies is because of the fact that nitrifying biomass has very poor flocculating properties and thus frequent wash out and process disturbance causes lower removal rates. Thus, to compensate for these lower removal rates, the reactors required with these technologies are very huge. Also municipal wastewater treatment plants are subjected to very high variation in flow as well as organic and nitrogen loads seasonally as well as on daily basis. Under such highly dynamic environmental conditions the nitrification kinetics of these conventional technologies are severely affected.

LEVAPOR IFAS PROCESS: AN IDEAL SOLUTION FOR BNR

Levapor Technology based IFAS process solutions for Biological Nutrient Removal (BNR) process offer highly efficient, resilient and stable nutrient removal over a wide range of operating and environmental conditions which otherwise reduces the performance of suspended growth activated sludge process based BNR systems.

Due to combination of both attached growth as well as suspended growth process, both BOD/COD removal and nitrification can be achieved in a single aerobic reactor. As much of the nitrifying biomass is fixed on Levapor carriers, the hybrid IFAS Process achieves excellent Nitrification to very high degree of removal regardless of clarifier performance and settling properties.

ONE PROCESS, MANY CONFIGURATIONS

Because of hybrid process configuration which involves suspended biomass (MLSS) through RAS line , Levapor IFAS process can be configured for any of the BNR process like Anoxic-Oxic, A2O, Bardenpho, Step Feed Process, contact stabilization, plug flow and Oxidation Ditch process as used with suspended growth activated sludge technology. The availability of suspended MLSS through RAS recycle line eliminates the need for media in the Anoxic basins for denitrification and Bio-P removal using Anaerobic selector can be configured much easily compared to once through MBBR process.

Further due to higher inner porosity of Levapor carriers, a significant level of Simultaneous Nitrification and Denitrification (SNDN) is achieved with Levapor BNR systems which reduces the requirements of high Nitrate recycle flows which is usual with suspended growth technologies.

ADVANTAGES OF LEVAPOR IFAS PROCESS FOR BNR:

• Single Reactor for BOD removal/nitrification
• Remarkable higher removal rates resulting in smaller reactors and foot print
• Better settling properties and clarifier performance
• Higher protection against toxic shock loads
• Lower nitrate recycle flows and energy consumption
• Efficient operation under wide range of flows and organic loading conditions
• Can be configured with any conventional suspended growth process

Our team of experts who utilizes extensive modelling, historical data and practice oriented pilot testing based solutions for your specific BNR needs. Get in touch with Levapor team for your next BNR solution which delivers results under all conditions.