Nitrification enhancement in lagoons using fixed film media

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Lagoons, commonly used in municipal wastewater treatment, are limited in their ability to treat wastewater due to limitations in the process and operational flexibilities. The small municipalities using lagoons are under stress due to the non-compliance issues owing to increasingly stringent regulations and their lack of financial resources to opt for advanced systems such as activated sludge plants. Therefore, there is a great need for finding low cost technological improvements for lagoons that would help to achieve enhanced effluent water quality in these lagoons. Several innovative technologies are available, which have the potential to enhance the performance of existing lagoons through simple upgrades without interrupting regular treatment. One such simple attached growth system based technology available for enhancing the nitrification performance of a lagoon is called "fixed film technology." The present project involved conducting performance study of the Kingdom City lagoon, and evaluating the effect of the fixed film technology on the performance of the lagoon to remove pollutants of concern. Bi-weekly wastewater samples were collected during September 2005 and June 2007 and analyzed for various parameters including pH, DO, temperature, TSS, VSS, BOD, COD, alkalinity, ammonia, nitrates and nitrites. Biomass growth was observed during the study period to a limited extent. This study has generated huge amount of data with the fixed films in place in the lagoon. During the analysis of the data, it was strongly felt that the background data, without fixed films, was insufficient to compare the performance of the lagoon with fixed film media installed in place. The findings of the study indicate that the effluent quality improvements may occur with the fixed-film media introduction in the lagoon.