Can Aerobic Granular Reactors help a Land-locked Plant Upgrade to BNR? From Bench-scale testing to Full-scale Conceptual Design

The Tomahawk Wastewater Treatment Plant in Overland Park, Kansas, currently utilizing tricking filters, must upgrade to biological nutrient removal to meet future nutrient discharge goals of 8 mg-TN/L and 0.5 mg-TP/L. The site is located in a flood plain and is land-limited. With these site challenges, small footprint technologies are being evaluated, and recent full-scale applications of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) by Nereda, DHV, have made AGS a promising option. A bench scale pilot study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of an AGS process as an alternative technology for the plant upgrade. The influent wastewater at the Tomahawk Creek facility is much more dilute than the operating DHV installations. In this study, AGS was evaluated using three bench-scale reactors operated at the Tomahawk Creek facility for six months (October 2014 – April 2015). Aerobic granulation was successful in the low-strength wastewater and the data was used for full-scale conceptual design.