Liquid purification or separation – Processes – Treatment by living organism
Reexamination Certificate
2001-02-20
2003-10-07
Upton, Christopher (Department: 1724)
Liquid purification or separation
Processes
Treatment by living organism
C210S710000, C210S713000, C210S804000, C210S195300, C210S197000, C210S202000, C210S806000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06630072
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF INVENTION
This invention generally relates to apparatuses and methods for treating water and other fluids, including, but not limited to, agricultural and industrial waste water, utilizing a combination of screening and a benign, naturally occurring, biological processes to eliminate and cut the production of, often associated, offensive odors.
BACKGROUND OF INVENTION
For purposes of this patent, the following terms are defined. As used herein, the term “conveyed” or “convey” means and refers to any system or process for directing, channeling, sending, spraying, blowing, moving, funneling, pouring, pumping wastewater or other solid or at partially liquid material. As used herein, the term “tank” means and refers to a bin(s), pond(s), container, area, and the like. As used herein, the term “trolley” means and refers to a bin, tank, collection site, collection vehicle, area, pile, and the like. As used herein, the term “pass,” “passing,” “passed,” and other conjugations means and refers to convey, to direct and/or to transport via any method or structure common in the art such as pipe, funnel, trough, line, slope, gully, trench, river, stream, and the like. As used herein, the term “lagoon” means and refers to a lagoon, pond, lake, stream, retention structure, facultative pond and the like.
When wild hogs roamed the forest in sparse numbers with the population determined by the available food sources, the environmental impact of the hog excretion was insignificant. The individual animal roamed freely, spreading his waste over large areas as he traveled. Later, when man domesticated hog and other livestock, and increased the local concentration to correspond to the caretakers food production, the environmental impact of waste was at first minimal. The farmer removed the waste manure from the pig-sty and spread it over his farm for fertilizer. In recent times, however, livestock production density has dramatically increased. For example, the specialty hog production operators purchased their hog feed (cereal grains) from other farmers who specialized in the production of grain cereal. This enables one operator to have the hog production facility of 10,000 head of hogs or more. The production of hog manure now becomes a problem. The spreading of large quantities of hog manure on land requires an extensive amount of land. The soil has a finite capacity to degrade animal feces, and when exceeded it becomes the equivalent of a pile of manure. The waste is often accumulated and dispersed over the cropland at specific times of the year. However, there are physical limitations on the distribution of the waste because it cannot be practically applied to near mature crops without the destruction of the crop. Also it cannot be applied when the waste may run off the soil because the soil is saturated or frozen. In fact, several states within the U.S. have created regulations prohibiting land application during the winter months.
In addition to the practical limits of the distribution of animal feces, regulatory agencies have applied limits on the amount of feces that may be spread. The regulations limit the amount of animal feces per acre to be about equivalent to the plant uptake of the non-biodegradable components. These regulations were created to prohibit the surface run-off from storm water and the excess percolation of the soluble waste components into the ground water.
In recent times, livestock producers have elected to create pits or lagoons for the collection of the waste. In the barns or houses, the animals live on elevated flooring which permits the feces to drop through the floor to a sub-floor. This sub-floor is periodically flushed to remove the feces and maintain a healthy living environment. The feces, with the wash down water as a vehicle, flow to the storage lagoon. The water utilized to flush the livestock production floor and move the freshly produced feces to the lagoon is usually recycled supernatant from the storage lagoon. Recycling the wastewater provides two advantages to the producer. First, it reduces that amount of fresh water that must be provided and secondly, since it is recycled from the storage lagoon, the size of the storage facility can be significantly reduced.
The problem with the recycled water is that it contains high levels of ammonia (breakdown product of the waste urea) and odors, which are not beneficial to the health of the livestock. High levels of ammonia in the flush water require the building to be vented to reduce the ambient levels of ammonia. Increased ventilation lowers the ambient temperatures in the winter. The lower temperatures lower the rate of weight gain of the animals and increases the food requirement of the animal to maintain body temperature.
Biological cultures purify water by exploiting the metabolic processes of various bacterial and algal species to convert organic and inorganic waste products into benign end products, typically carbon dioxide and a reproduction of the species. However, intermediate products formed by biological processes can include methane and sulfur containing gases, volatile organic acids or other volatile or odiferous products, depending on the nature of the culture, the waste being digested and the ambient environment.
Biological cultures can be fostered of desirable microorganisms, which provide the functional basis for the wastewater treatment by metabolically converting the waste products. However, cultures of undesirable microorganisms which produce undesirable tastes, odors, growths, or which are actually toxic are also possible. Therefore, it is important in biological wastewater treatment that cultures of suitable microorganisms are fostered and the undesirable cultures avoided.
The organic material in the wastewater serves both as an energy source and a source of carbon for cell synthesis by the microorganisms of the culture. Microorganisms are both reactants and products in the biological treatment of wastewater. Typical configurations of biological reactor cultures for purifying water include suspended culture processes and attached growth systems such as fixed-film reactors. Suspended cultures include activated sludge (flocculent cultures), aerated lagoons, oxidation ponds, and anaerobic cultures.
The oxygen level present in the culture material affects biological digestion of organic waste material because the oxygen level determines the metabolic pathway available to the microorganism. Aerobic conditions provide plenty of oxygen to the culture, and foster the growth of microorganisms that can use the exogenous oxygen as a terminal electron acceptor in the oxidation of organic acids generated form the metabolic breakdown of organic material, i.e. aerobic biological activity. If insufficient exogenous oxygen is available to the culture, the conditions are anaerobic. Under anaerobic conditions, the absence of oxygen as a terminal electron acceptor results in the excretion of organic acids into the culture medium as waste.
Farmers often create storage lagoons on their farms to accumulate and store the flushed wastewater, feces and urine until an appropriate time to distribute the wastes over the land. The surface water is utilized as flush water not only to reduce the amount of water consumed by the animal production, but also to conserve the capacity of the lagoon. Using the lagoon water for flushing reduces the water consumption by 70-90% and proportionally reduces the required size of the lagoon. The wastewater is usually stored until planting time and applied to cropland in place of a commercial fertilizer.
Currently, during the storage process, due to the large volume of animal waste entering the lagoon, there is insufficient oxygen present to support the growth of aerobic cultures and/or aerobic biological activity. In the absence of the desired oxygen, the microbial growth in the lagoon converts to anaerobic activity. This anaerobic activity leads to what is commonly known as a “septic” lagoon. In a septic lagoon a very foul odor is present from the production of hydrogen sul
Hoffland Environmental, Inc.
The Matthews Firm
Upton Christopher
LandOfFree
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