Liquid purification or separation – Processes – Treatment by living organism
Patent
1997-05-09
1999-05-25
Upton, Christopher
Liquid purification or separation
Processes
Treatment by living organism
210626, 210630, 210903, C02F 330
Patent
active
059067462
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method for controlling biodegradation of aqueous media containing biodegradable material which comprises nitrogen-containing components. Further, the invention relates to methods for purifying such aqueous media. Finally, the invention pertains to a water purification plant wherein these methods are employed in the purification processes.
Documents cited herein are incorporated herein by reference.
GENERAL BACKGROUND
Today, protection of the environment is of great concern to mankind. Increasing population as well as a general demand for increased quality of life expressed as a healthy and beautiful environment and at the same time a life style based on the use of advanced technology has accentuated the need for water, especially pure water, throughout the world but especially in the industrialized parts of the world.
In highly industrialized countries, especially countries with large urban concentrations, it is necessary to treat the waste water from households and industrial production so as to avoid an unacceptable level of polluted and polluting material in the environment, i.e. in the recipients for the waste water such as lakes, rivers and other waterways, the sea, etc. The polluted and polluting material comprises a variety of substances, for example organic and inorganic substances which may or may not be decomposable in nature. Among the polluting material usually present in waste water effluents, decomposable organic matter and heavy metals are of the greatest concern.
An increasing amount of the waste water which is produced worldwide is now subjected to some kind of treatment, such treatment being of mechanical, chemical or biological nature or any combination thereof. Generally, it is expected that there will be focused even more on waste water treatment in the future as the public awareness of environmental hazards is becoming even stronger than today.
The main purpose of purifying e.g. municipal and industrial waste water is to reduce the content of biodegradable material in the waste water, i.e. to ensure that the treated waste water does not contain such amounts of biodegradable material, i.e. biodegradable organic and/or inorganic matter, that these amounts will lead to an unacceptable low level of oxygen in the recipient due to the amount of oxygen required for aerobic decomposition of degradable (organic) material.
The removal of biodegradable material is often performed by including some sort of biological treatment step in the water purification process. Normally, complex cultures of microorganisms are used to effect the biodegradation (as the microorganisms metabolize the biodegradable material and thereby use it at as source of energy) and the result is a conversion of the biodegradable material into environmentally acceptable compounds such as CO.sub.2 and N.sub.2.
It is especially desired to reduce the amount of organic matter and at the same time to reduce the amount nitrogen-containing components present in the waste water.
Such elimination of nitrogen-containing components from waste water has proved to be difficult and resource consuming. The goal is to convert the nitrogen bound in nitrogen-containing components of waste-water into gaseous (atmospheric) nitrogen, and this is traditionally done by the steps of nitrification (an oxidation step) and denitrification (a reduction step). Prior to these steps, complex nitrogen-containing substances are deaminated by i.a. deaminases produced by the microorganisms (or optionally supplied to the system in question) and the remaining main problem is thus to convert ammonia into gaseous nitrogen.
Numerous attempts of improving the nitrogen elimination in waste water purification has been attempted. The general scheme is the following: NH.sub.4.sup.+ +2O.sub.2 .fwdarw.NO.sub.3.sup.- +2H.sup.+ +H.sub.2 O and the denitrification involves the reaction NO.sub.3.sup.- +A.sub.red .fwdarw.1/2N.sub.2 +A.sub.ox, wherein A.sub.red and A.sub.ox are the reduced and oxidized states, respect
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Heinen Nicolas
Helmo Kim
BioBalance A/S
Kowalski Thomas J.
Upton Christopher
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