Sometimes it doesn’t take a major plant upgrade to drive down the nutrient content of effluent and improve overall plant performance.Bob Gabry, chief operator at the Sunderland (Massachusetts) Wastewater Treatment Plant, will gladly so attest. A few inexpensive changes to the aeration process at his 0.5 mgd (design) activated sludge plant yielded consistently low effluent total nitrogen, plus elimination of filament problems, better sludge settling, reduced biosolids hauling costs, and substantial savings on chlorine.It all resulted from a few months’ work and experimentation in 2014 with Grant Weaver, P.E., president of The Water Planet Company, a wastewater treatment consulting firm.Flying
