High-rate wastewater treatment combining a moving bed biofilm reactor and enhanced particle separation

Many cities around the world are looking for compact wastewater treatment alternatives since space for treatment plants is becoming scarce. In this paper development of a new compact, high-rate treatment concept with results from experiments in lab-scale and pilot-scale are presented. The idea behind the treatment concept is that coagulation/floc separation may be used to separate suspended and colloidal matter (resulting in > 70% organic matter removal in normal wastewater) while a high-rate biofilm process (based on Moving Bed biofilm reactors) may be used for removing low molecular weight, easily biodegradable, soluble organic matter. By using flotation for floc/biomass separation, the total residence time for a plant according to this concept will normally be < 1 hour. A cationic polymer combined with iron is used as coagulant at low dosages (i.e. 1-2 mg polymer/l, 5-10 mg Fe/l) resulting in low sludge production (compared to conventional chemical treatment) and sufficient P-removal.