By Jared Alder, MS In England, it is estimated that around 700 million gallons of water—the equivalent of 1,200 Olympics-size swimming pools—is lost every day to leaks in the country’s vast water system. Often the water just rises out to the pavement and runs down the road. Utilities spend countless hours and a great deal of money and other resources trying to locate the sources of leaks, often tearing up roads multiple times in
By Heather Jennings, PE When I worked with engineering firms, there were a lot of water master plans being developed. Many of them were updates, as the plans had been around for 5–10 years and needed revision. Some master plans evaluated water and wastewater systems from scratch. All of these were interesting to me due
By Heather Jennings, PE When I first came into the water field in the 2000s, the general rule of Chemical Oxygen Demand to Biochemical Oxygen Demand (or COD to BOD5) was 2:1. That was pretty much all you needed to know in order to understand whether something could be treated chemically, physically, or biologically. Now, the wastewater industry has moved toward COD instead of BOD5. The reason that COD is
By Heather Jennings, PE Of all the wastewater lagoon systems I have been to, I’ve never met the same lagoon twice! Many consider lagoons old tech, but they can be very reliable and more stable treatment systems than many of the more sophisticated systems out there. Lagoons, like any wastewater system, should not be left
By Jared Alder, MS The treatment of wastewater is a delicate balance of chemical, biological, and mechanical processes. Treatment operators need to find a happy medium to provide high-quality treatment, while staying within budgets and all the while ensuring they meet environmental compliance. Operators are expected to deal with a constantly varying treatment system, such
By Heather Jennings, PE The first thing I usually hear from operators is that they don’t have any problems! Everything runs perfectly, all the time, until it doesn’t. Then the heartburn, extra hours, and long days begin. The only other thing as sure as death and taxes for a wastewater system is that it will
By Jared Alder, MS There has been a big focus in domestic wastewater on the removal of phosphorus and the potential for excess phosphorus to cause eutrophication in receiving water. Treatment facilities of all different shapes and sizes with inadequate phosphorus treatment technologies have the potential for excess phosphorus release. The removal of phosphorus from
By Heather Jennings, PE Phosphorus is one of the most abundant elements on earth. It’s essential for adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy carrier life is built on. But in excess in our lakes and ponds, we see large algal growths occurring. Many times, these algal blooms suffocate the surrounding aquatic life and or produce toxins
By Heather Jennings, PE The great teeter-totter of wastewater is the nitrification and denitrification cycle in activated sludge wastewater systems. It takes both to convert ammonia to nitrogen gas! Both processes feed off of and support each other but, in some ways, they have competing needs. Nitrification consists of ripping off the hydrogen in ammonia and adding oxygen
By Heather Jennings, PE Today we are going to focus on nitrifiers, those wastewater treatment autotrophs that get energy from oxidizing ammonia. (Autotrophs are microorganisms that produce complex organic compounds using inorganic carbon from simple substances as a food source.) Oxidizing ammonia is a fancy way of saying ripping off hydrogens to stick oxygens onto
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