TDS Limit Impacting Biological Wastewater Treatment

Published on by in Monitoring

Hi All,

Can anyone give insight regarding TDS impact on Biological process for wastewater treatment for COD, Ammonia, Nitrate, and Phosphorus removal?

What are the highest TDS levels that these biological processes can function?

Will TDS levels of +5000mg/l be too high and cause biology to fail?

Taxonomy

8 Answers

  2. Textile effluents very often exceed 5000 mg/l TDS,  neverthless textile ETPs are very often "fully bio" and still allow to comply with limits.
    Bio-Processes are somehow inhibited by mid-high salinity, nothing that a good ETP design couldn't take into account for a reliable operation. 
     

  3. TDS can be many substances, Ca  P, Na, Fe, Pb, etc. Some of these are O2 scavengers and as a result many have a higher acceptance for O2 electrons (hierarchy). Therefore changes in TDS can affect volume of O2 required for desired reductions and O2 required for a healthy floc. Inhibition levels can be measured by changes in ORP values.

  5. TDS is total dissolved solids and it is linked with salinity, depending on your wastewater . There are some theoretical limits and 5000 mg/l is high. In such cases your treatment plant can fail. For such cases you need to adapt your microorganism to such environment . You can do it by feeding slowly your plant.

    1 Comment

    1. Ademar Cesar Ferreira  Thanks for your input.

      I was told about resilient microorganisms from Australia that is being used in very saline water.

      I literally just want to reduce COD so quite tricky

      1 Comment reply

      1. May be it is a solution but you can prepare your bugs yourself since you have a tank where you can control your food and microorganisms. We did it in Brazil in a plant that was treating production water from an oil company. Operation of these plants requires expertise and control otherwise you can loose your bugs. You shall be sure that you do not have other contaminants tat can affect your biology. 

  6. Suggest you go back to basics which have been apparent for over a hundred years. If you want your solids removal process to work efficiently then you first have to screen out large solids and untreatable rubbish especially during rainfall. Secondly remove grit as it will clog up the downstream processes. Thirdly settle solids and remove the resulting sludge as they will take a inordinate amount of energy to oxygenate them. Fourthly oxygenate then settle out the resulting solids.

    Ammonia removal is more complicated and requires a more specialized approach depending on when it is removed.

    The figure you mention is very high for anything to function.

    1 Comment

    1. I think coarse screening and grit removal is one of the first things you do for pretreatment and everyone applies this, my concern was mostly on the TDS on biology since I only had one source confirm that they can operate at high TDS. But thanks for your input.

  7. Sometimes we use filters first or a flocculent in addition to biological methods. Our biological/organic product contains flocculent and is biodegradable.....works fine 99% of the time....once you have dosing right.

    See web site: --       www.biophysics-research.net

    2 Comments

    1. I had one company telling me that they source certain type of bugs from Australia for the high TDS waters since most biological processes cannot withstand high TDS.

  8. The facilities I worked at had pretreatment programs in place to monitor the Industies waste so we don't have those levels as indicated. A lot of information online so you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Also we stopped receiving the reject from RO units.

    2 Comments

    1. Melissa Durbin unfortunately one cannot do pretreatment as the high COD prevents one from using RO. I was hoping people with experience based on what they've designed/operate would give their view on it.

      So I wanted to know what max limits were.

      But thanks for the input.

    2.  

      Bonjour pour qu'un processus Biologique  reste activé, il est nécessaire que les caractéristiques biologiques nécessaire à son activité soient présentent. L'effluent d'eaux usées  doit être à caractéristiques biologiques.

      La technicité contenant le biologique doit présenter des conditions de fonctionnement biologique. Cette technicité ne fait que préserver le biologique, hormis tout cela il n'y a aucune activité biologique. 

      Ce qu'il faut aussi savoir c'est qu'aucun être humain, aucune technicité aussi sophistiquée soit elle,  ne sont en mesure de faire du traitement biologique. Le biologique lui tout seul fait du traitement biologique, si et seulement si, les conditions le permettent.