The American University in Cairo

Engineering and Science Services

Professional Program in Environmental Engineering (EVEN)

EVEN 018
Selected Topics: Design and Operation of
Wastewater Treatment Plants

Lecture 3

Mohamed El Zayat, Ph.D.

m_elzyat@aucegypt.edu
EVEN-018 - Lecture 3 Spring 2019 1
 Main Topics
✓ Treatment plant basis of design
✓ Preliminary treatment: screening, girt removal and sedimentation
✓ Secondary treatment: biological treatment systems, clarification and
disinfection.
✓ Advanced treatment: removal of phosphorus, ultrafiltration, chemical
treatment
✓ Mechanical and electrical equipment in WWTP’s (Pumps, scrapers,
instrumentation).
✓ Sludge management
✓ Operation of wastewater treatment plants (performance evaluation, special
condition energy conservation)
✓ Individual household disposal systems (introduction)
✓ Small communities wastewater treatment systems
✓ Case studies.

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 Main Topics
Example: Horizontal Flow Grit Chamber

A wastewater treatment plant receives a flow of 35,000 m3/day.

Calculate the required volume (m3) for a 3 m deep horizontal flow
grit chamber that will remove particles with a specific gravity of
more than 1.9 and a size greater than 0.2 mm diameter.

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 Main Topics
Solution:
The basic design equation is:

Calculate the particle settling velocity (vs) using Stokes’ Law.

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 Main Topics
Solution:
The design particle (and all larger, denser particles) will be removed.

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 Primary Treatment

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 Primary Treatment

• The goal of primary treatment is to remove solids through

quiescent (tranquil), gravity settling.

• Typically, domestic wastewater is held for a period of

approximately 2 hours.

• Settling tanks, also referred to as sedimentation tanks or

clarifiers, can be either rectangular or circular.

• During sedimentation, solids settle to the bottom of the tank,

where they are collected as a liquid-solid sludge.

• The following figure shows a cross section of a circular clarifier.

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 Primary Treatment

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 Primary Treatment

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 Primary Treatment

• Primary treatment removes about 60% of the suspended solids

(TSS), 30% of the BOD, and 20% of the phosphorus (P).

• The BOD and phosphorous removed in this stage are primarily in

the particulate phase (that is, part of the TSS).

• Any dissolved BOD, N, or P will pass through primary treatment

and enter secondary treatment.

• Coagulants can be added to improve the removal of particulate

matter.

• This may reduce the overall energy costs required during second
treatment to biologically convert these particles to CO2, water,
and new biomass.

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 Primary Treatment

• The clarified effluent that exits primary treatment is routed to

secondary treatment, and the solids (the sludge) removed during
settling are segregated for further treatment.

• Primary sludge is malodourous, may contain pathogenic

organisms, and has high water content (perhaps less than 1
percent solids).

• These characteristics make it difficult to dispose of

• Secondary clarifiers are designed to remove much smaller

particles because most of the particulate matter at this point in
the treatment plant consists of microorganisms.

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 Primary Treatment

EXAMPLE 1: Sizing a Primary Settling Tank

A municipal wastewater treatment plant treats an average flow of
12,000 m3/day and a peak hourly flow of 30,000 m3/day.

Two circular clarifiers are to be designed, using a depth of 4 meters

and over flow rate of 40 m3/m2-day.

Calculate the area, diameter, volume, and detention time required for
each clarifier.

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 Primary Treatment

To calculate the surface area required for clarification, divide the

average flow rate (Q) by the over flow rate (OR):

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 Primary Treatment

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 Primary Treatment

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 Primary Treatment

Solution
At the average flow, the calculated values of detention time and
overflow rate are within the ranges.

At peak flow, the calculated values of overflow rate and detention

time are fine, but are slightly lower than desired.

The final clarifier design may need to have an increased surface area
to provide enough detention time for sufficient solids to settle.

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 Secondary Treatment

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 Secondary Treatment

• The wastewater that exits the primary clarifier has lost a

significant amount of the particulate matter it contained, but it still
has a high demand for oxygen due to an abundance of dissolved
organic matter (measured by BOD).

• Secondary treatment (which is a form of biological treatment)

utilizes microorganisms to decompose these high energy
molecules.

• There are two basic approaches to biological treatment, differing

in the manner in which the waste is brought into contact with the
microorganisms

• In suspended- growth reactors, the organisms and wastewater

are mixed together, while in attached – growth reactor, the
organisms are attached to a support structure, and the
wastewater
EVEN-018 - Lecture 3 is passed over
Springthe
2019organisms. 18
 Secondary Treatment
Suspended Growth
Activated Sludge where the biomass is mixed with the sewage and
(AS) can be operated in a smaller space than trickling
filters that treat the same amount of water.

Sequencing Batch is a fill- and – decant system which uses the same
Reactor (SBR) unit processes (aeration and clarification) as for
the conventional AS system. SBRs, however,
carry out these processes sequentially in the
same tank.

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 Secondary Treatment
Suspended Growth
Extended the extended aeration process is similar to the
Aeration conventional AS process, but it is operated under low
Process organic loading conditions and uses a long aeration
time. Oxidation ditches typically operate in an
extended aeration mode with long detention and
solids retention times.

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 Secondary Treatment
Suspended Growth
Membrane the membrane bioreactor process uses membrane
bioreactor treatment units submerged within an activated sludge
(MBR), tank to produce a very high quality effluent. The flow
of treated effluent through the membrane units is
controlled by the available gravity head.

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 Secondary Treatment

Attached Growth (fixed- film growth reactor)

Trickling Filter It consists of a fixed bed of rocks, coke, gravel, slag,
ceramic, or plastic media over which wastewater flows
downward and causes a layer of microbial slime
(biofilm) to grow, covering the bed of media.

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 Secondary Treatment

Attached Growth (fixed- film growth reactor)

Bio-towers Bio towers use plastic media for increasing the specific
surface area of the biological action

Rotating The RBC process involves allowing the wastewater to

Biological come in contact with a biological medium in order to
Contactors remove pollutants in the wastewater before discharge

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 Secondary Treatment

Attached Growth (fixed- film growth reactor)

Moving Bed The MBBR system consists of an aeration tank (similar

Biofilm to an activated sludge tank) with special plastic carriers
Reactor that provide a surface where a biofilm can grow
(MBBR)

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 Secondary Treatment

Attached Growth (fixed- film growth reactor)

Integrated This hybrid process (referred to as an integrated fixed-

Fixed-Film film activated sludge, or IFAS), enables activated sludge
Activated systems to achieve dramatic gains in volumetric
Sludge (IFAS) productivity without increasing mixed liquor suspended
solids (MLSS) levels in the process.

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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Activated Sludge
• The most common biological treatment system is a suspended
growth system called the activated - sludge process.

• Effluent form the primary clarifier is routed to an aeration tank

(also referred to as an aeration basin), usually by gravity, and
mixed with a diverse mass of microorganisms comprising
bacteria, fungi, rotifers, and protozoa.

• This mixture of liquid, waste solids, and microorganisms is called

the mixed liquor.

• A measurement of TSS obtained from the aeration basin is

termed the mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS) in mg/l.
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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Activated Sludge
• Volatile suspended solids (VSS) can be used as surrogate to
describe the reactor’s biomass.

• This is because most of the solids are microorganisms that have

a high carbon content in their cell structure.

• Typically the volatile fraction mixed liquor volatile suspended

solids (MLVSS) expressed in mg/l is 60 to 80 percent of the
MLSS.

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 Secondary Treatment

The food web of the activated-sludge process

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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Activated Sludge

• The food web is somewhat truncated, both laterally (primary

procedures are unimportant because the waste provides a
source of organic matter) and vertically (higher consumers are
absent because the system is engineered to top out at a point
where the remaining particulate matter is easily removed by
sedimentation).

• Different organisms groups predominate depending on the

degree of stabilization of the waste.

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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Activated Sludge
• At first, amoeboid and zooflagellate protozoans dominate,
utilizing the dissolved and particulate organic matter initially
present.

• Next zooflagellate and free-swimming ciliate protozoans increase

in numbers, feeding on developing populations of bacteria.

• Finally, stalked ciliates and rotifers become most abundant,

feeding from the surfaces of activated sludge floc.

• Plant operating practices such as the solids retention time (SRT),

which will be discussed later dictate the degree of stabilization
and thus the successional position of the microbiology
community.
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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Activated Sludge
• Molecular biology techniques are currently being used to further
understand the unique microbial ecology of wastewater treatment
systems.

• The majority of the BOD is degraded in the presence of oxygen,

so air is added to the reactor to supply oxygen, which must be
transferred to the aqueous phase.

• This requires energy inputs.

• In practice, dissolved- oxygen concentrations in the aeration tank

are maintained at 1.5 to 4.0 mg/l, with 2 mg/l being a common
value.
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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Activated Sludge
• Levels greater than 4 mg/l do not significantly improve operation
but raise operating costs because of the energy associated with
forcing air into the system.

• Low oxygen levels can lead to sludge bulking, an abundance of

filamentous organisms with poor settling characteristics.

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 Secondary Treatment
Suspended – Growth Reactors:
• Activated Sludge
• Bacteria are primarily responsible for assimilating the dissolved
organic matter in wastewater, and the rotifers and protozoa are
helpful in removing the dispersed bacteria, which otherwise
would not settle out.

• This would cause the plant’s effluent to not meet permit

requirements for suspended solids.

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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Activated Sludge
• The energy derived from the decomposition process is primarily
used for cell maintenance and to produce more organisms.

• Once most of the dissolved organics have been used up, the
microorganisms are routed to the secondary (or final) clarifier for
separation.

• In the secondary clarifier, two streams are produced:

1) A clarified effluent, which is sent to the next stage of treatment

(usually disinfection)

2) A liquid-solid sludge largely comprising microorganisms (but

perhaps 2 to 4 percent solids).
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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Activated Sludge
• Lying at the bottom of the secondary clarifier, without a food
source, these organisms become nutrient starved or activated.

• A portion of the sludge is then pumped to the head of the tank

(return activated sludge), where the process starts all over
again.

• The remainder of the sludge is removed from the system and is

processed for disposal (waste activated sludge).

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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Design of the Activated – Sludge System

• It is necessary to continuously waste sludge from the systems to

balance the gains in biomass that occur through microbial growth
(as we will discuss this later)

• A set of equations allow sizing of the biological reactor and,

importantly, understanding relationships in the activated sludge
system between microorganism concentration, solids removal,
and influent organic matter.

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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Design of the Activated – Sludge System

A schematic of the activated sludge process with a control volume added for
EVEN-018 - Lecture 3
mass balance
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 Secondary Treatment

In all these expressions:

Q → represents flow, expressed in m3/day
S → is substrate concentration (usually measured as mg BOD or
COD per L)
X → is solids (biomass) concentration, measured as mg SS/L or mg
VSS/L
V → is the volume of the aeration tank, expressed in m3.
The subscripts refer to influent (o), effluent (e), recycle (r), underflow
from clarifiers (u), and wasted solids (w).
EVEN-018 - Lecture 3 Spring 2019 38
 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Design of the Activated – Sludge System

• To develop a master design equation, we will first set up and

analyze two mass balances, conducted on dissolved organic
matter (substrate) and solids (biomass).

• This analysis, when combined with our understanding of

microbial growth, will allow us to determine the volume of the
aeration basin.

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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Design of the Activated – Sludge System

• Because the suspension of wastewater and suspended

organisms appears mixed, the aeration basin is modeled as a
completed mixed flow reactor (CMFR).

• In this reactor, the organisms convert dissolved organic matter

(measured as CBOD and NBOD) into:

- Gaseous CO2,
- Water,
- Nitrate, and
- particulate organic matter (more organisms).

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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Design of the Activated – Sludge System
• A settling tank (called the secondary clarifier) that follows the
biological reactor captures the particulate matter (sludge).

• The typical life of microorganism in a wastewater plant is first to

feed in the aeration basin for several hours (4 – 6 hrs., for
example), then flow to the secondary clarifier for several
additional hours, where the organism rests while it settles to the
bottom of the tank.

• When the organisms are hungry again, they are recycled back to
the biological reactor to seed the biological reactor with a
metabolically active (hungry) group of organisms.

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 Secondary Treatment

Suspended – Growth Reactors:

• Design of the Activated – Sludge System
• For a microorganisms in the process, this process is repeated
several times (feed and rest, feed and rest, feed and rest, and so
on).

• Because the microorganism population is increasing due to the

presence of substrate (CBOD and NBOD) and the plant operator
needs to maintain a constant concentration of microorganisms in
the aeration basin, some organisms must be removed from the
secondary clarifier.

• These organisms are wasted from the process; hence the term
wasting of sludge is used to describe the removal of solids form
the activated sludge via the secondary clarifier.
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 THANKS

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