Overview: Introduction and WRF Project Overview

Many Water Resources Recovery Facilities (WRRF) are facing demands to reduce the nutrient load discharged into the environment. While effluent discharge permits are still evolving there, some watersheds face requirements in the form of nutrient load caps, a percentage nutrient reduction, and, for some WRRFs that already remove nutrients, a prospect of lower limits. This goal of this project is to produce optimization guidelines to improve WRRF nutrient removal performance while ensuring the stability of nutrient removal processes. This guidance is particularly important for facilities that are looking to achieve increased nutrient removal from existing WRRFs or those striving meet very low effluent nutrient concentrations. Facilities that seek to implement advanced approaches and technologies such as short-cut nitrogen removal, sidestream treatment, carbon redirection (which can impact carbon to nitrogen and carbon to phosphorus ratios, as well as energy recovery), advanced solids fermentation, and certain treatment processes for resource recovery purposes also benefit from this guidance. The goal of WRF project 4973 is to provide guidance for optimizing WRRF operation while reducing nutrient discharge into the environment. A series of WRF sponsored webinars on selected topics is planned for 2020/2021 on optimization for nutrient removal