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Emerging Trends

Another Observation From a Road Warrior! In the world of water and wastewater, emerging trends are beginning to influence the entire industry. In my travels around the country, I am discovering that issues in Arizona are also occurring in Washington, and issues in...

How to Improve Your Lagoon with Bioaugmentation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r91B25-vBI Kathleen Kelly shares 4 ways to improve your lagoon using bio augmentation. Perfect for industrial or municipal lagoons of any size and flow rate.

Webinar – Plant Startup with Tanner Hartsock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxpnrWdEUrw Tanner Hartsock M.S. takes us through the process of starting a wastewater plant and considers different options operators have in solving their challenges. What we didn’t expect was to get such a glowing endorsement from a...

Managing Septage and Grease Haulers

Road Warrior’s Series: Managing Haulers My first response when I hear of systems agreeing to take on Grease and/or Septic discharge to their system is to “just say NO!” How these materials affect wastewater systems is dependent...

Where Have All the Snowbirds Gone?

Another Road Warrior Observation F:M Issues In my travels this year, as limited as they have been (yes, I am suffering from severe hotel withdrawal), I have observed a recurring issue hampering the optimum efficiency of wastewater operations. This issue is the lack of...

Nitrification in Cold Weather

One thing that is definite is understanding of when water temperatures get cold your bugs may not be so happy. One thing that has continued to show up year after year for the last 25 years in the environmental business, especially the wastewater industry, is the idea...

Public Education FOG

https://youtu.be/IRMsv0xzfQY Rick Allen discusses methods for educating the public on fats, oils and grease. This is a short webinar that lasts about 18 minutes.

Biological Nutrient Removal

Biological nutrient removal (BNR) is a process used for nitrogen and phosphorus removal from wastewater before it is discharged. BNR Challenges Conventional biological processes typically do not remove total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) to meet the...

Wastewater System Restart or Initial Start Up?

In the world of wastewater these days there are many challenges that will occur. Some you may have already seen and some may appear in the near future.  One of these many challenges is how to get your plant activated if it is killed off by known or...

Corn Testimonial

Corn Testimonial

Darwin Jeffers of Phillips County, CO used BioLynceus® Lot 125® on his 2010 Conservation Reserve...

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One of the most persistent challenges in lagoon wastewater treatment is solids (sludge) management. Lagoon systems are designed to reduce organic solids during wastewater
processing. Built up sludge is typically dredged from lagoon systems with heavy equipment. Once removed, sludge is dewatered and hauled to a disposal site. This process can cost $300 to $500 dollars per dry ton of solids.

Bioaugmentation is an effective method for reducing sludge in lagoon systems. By implementing concentrated cultures of bacteria (from natural soils and sediments) in these processes, treatment biomass is increased which can improve the efficiency of solids degradation.1

This process is also called ProBiotic Dredging®. BioLynceus® ProBiotic Scrubber® II (PBII) was used in the following case study to reduce the quantity of solids in a municipal lagoon system.

Figure 1. Case study lagoon system. PBII was injected into the collection system to reduce accumulated solids in the treatment cells.

A publicly owned treatment works (POTW) in a town of 2,700 people was experiencing sludge accumulation in their lagoon system. The three treatment cells averaged 0.3 MGD wastewater flows (with some seasonal variability). The solids which built up in the process would require dredging if they were not reduced another way.

The head wastewater operator learned about ProBiotic Dredging® in a wastewater training. ProBiotic Dredging® can be very effective for reducing organic solids in lagoon systems. The operator decided to propose this solution to the city council.

The council agreed to augment their system with BioLynceus® microbiology to reduce dredging costs. A treatment regimen of PBII was added to several high points in the collection system ahead of the influent to the first cell. By implementing PBII in the system, the abundance of solids degrading organisms were increased.

Figure 2. Average annual depth of clear water above the solid sludge profile in the first treatment cell. Depth measurements were collected at 12 locations around the lagoon. Increasing trends in average annual depth of clear water indicated an organic solids reduction via ProBiotic Dredging®.

Changes in sludge depth were estimated by determining the depth of clear water to the top of the sludge layer before and during treatment. Measurements were taken in the first treatment cell in fall the year prior to treatment and the next two years with treatment. After a year of PBII applications, the depth of clear water above the solid
sludge increased from about 12 to 19 inches (Figure 2).

This change indicated a seven-inch reduction in sludge depth over the year. During the second year of treatment, the average depth of clear water in the cell was increased to about 22 inches. The sludge layer was biologically degraded by an additional three inches over this time.

The POTW did not need to dredge the lagoons to maintain proper treatment holding capacity. The quality of wastewater processed remained high while solids were biologically degraded. The lagoon facility continues to treat with BioLynceus® PBII.

BioLynceus® ProBiotic Scrubber® II helps reduce solids in wastewater lagoon systems.

1 Gerardi, M. (2016). Wastewater Bioaugmentation and Biostimulation. Lancaster, Pennsylvania: DEStech Publications, Inc. Pp.117. https://www.amazon.com/Wastewater-Bioaugmentation-Biostimulation-Michael-Gerardi/dp/1932078789