Communication and Technology: Winning Formula for Treatment of Industrial Waste

As part of its ammonia compliance strategy, the City of St. Joseph, MO took an innovative approach to work with its industrial community to develop a public/private partnership to achieve compliance for ammonia and reduce capital and operating costs. This program focused on two key elements 1) communication with industrial community and 2) review and demonstration of new technology to achieve cost effective service rates for the industrial community within the City. Both of these focus elements were intertwined as the industrial users had to compare various options and decide whether to make improvements at their respective locations or invest in capacity/improvements at the City’s Water Protection Facility (WPF). Therefore the communication of cost effective solutions to the industries was paramount throughout this process. Wastewater from two industries comprises approximately 63 percent of the nitrogen load yet only 18 percent of the flow compared to the total plant influent. The wastewater characteristics (low carbon to nitrogen ratio) from these two industries make it more efficient to treat separately using technology utilizing specialized microbiology rather than to mix and dilute with the main domestic flow. The concept was to use anammox technology as a pretreatment stage to separately treat the industrial flow to minimize the cost that would be required to be borne by these industries and reduce the nitrogen load to the WPF. Anammox technologies that make use of existing equipment and tanks were especially considered. Two anammox process alternatives were evaluated, which were: • Alternative 1: Anaerobic ammonia oxidation (anammox) in a suspended growth SBR configuration (DEMON® by World Water Works) • Alternative 2: Anammox in an MBBR configuration (ANITA-Mox® by Veolia Water Solutions North America) Other process technologies such as integrated fixed film activated sludge (IFAS), granular sludge, shortcut nitrification/denitrification and also other anammox processes were evaluated preliminarily, however were excluded from this evaluation due to the need for significant additional pilot testing. Results of the bench and demonstration scale testing of the anammox process are presented within the paper. Costs for implementation of the technologies and resulting industry response are discussed.