Performance Evaluation of Parallel Operation of Conventional Primary Treatment versus Primary Filtration and Biofiltration Systems

In this project, the performance of two advanced primary treatment (APT) technologies, a pile cloth disk primary filter (CDPF) and a compressible media filter (CMF), were compared to conventional primary treatment. Conventional primary treatment (i.e., primary clarifier) typically removes 55 to 60% of total suspended solids (TSS) and 30 to 40% of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) from raw wastewater (Metcalf and Eddy, 2014). Primary filtration (PF) and biofiltration are emerging APT technologies that can remove high solids and organics load from raw wastewater after screening. PF typically achieves removal efficiencies of 75 to 85% for total suspended solids and 50 to 65% for biochemical oxygen demand (Caliskaner et al., 2018). Biofiltration also offers the potential for removing soluble organic fractions due to biological activity, which occurs because of increased depth of the filter medium and longer contact times. Additionally, the impact of APT on downstream operations such as secondary treatment and anaerobic digestion was evaluated.