Abstract. Current industrial environmental regulations favor processes with Integrative Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC). While several systems are regarded by different international directives as IPPC Best Available Techniques or Technologies (BAT), none of these systems are capable handling various pollutants of both gaseous and aquatic effluents. Additional hinder to a BAT-IPPC complete procedure are hazardous or uneconomical byproducts of the IPPC processes and significant auxiliary costs for consumables and energy. The current research and subsequent projects are aimed to the development of a Biological Integrative Pollution Prevention and Control (Bio-IPPC) system. Such system can be incorporated in various industrial processes, in a way that the byproduct is without hazardous potential and may be used as an economical raw material. The main initiative and heart of these systems is a micro-algae reactor, which is capable of treating various types of industrial pollutants both in the gaseous and aquatic phases. The algae nutrition is through thin-film circulation of the aquatic effluent and the reactor atmosphere is enriched by flue gases. The excessive algal biomass may be utilized for economic purposes starting with animal feedstock, through organic fertilizer and as industrial raw material for biofuels production or direct energy production. The first industrial project is a wastewater (WW) polishing stage to an industry zone WW treatment facility, which ensures high level effluent purification and assimilation of greenhouse gases, which are released during the WW bioremediation process. The second industrial application aims to treat aquatic and gaseous effluents from coal propelled power plants. The raw algal material from both projects although very different, is used for the development of new efficient scheme for bioethanol production. In summary, the system presented is an actual Bio-IPPC that can interactively treat several industrial effluents, while utilizing the algal biomass as a profitable raw material.
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) are usually planned for operational duration of several decades, nonetheless, at the end of that period and in many cases earlier, they need to be replaced. In the current project a typical extended aeration activated sludge facility have demonstrated high energy and labor consumption, as well as insufficient effluent quality. Since the option of replacing the WWTP was estimated in about 1.5 million USD, it was decided to try and rehabilitate it. The technical solutions applied included mainly a new aeration array with a reactive management system. Following this rehabilitation, the effluent quality became within the desired standards and with the new management system the energy consumption was reduced by about a half. Considering that the cost of implementing the new technical solutions was about tenth of the alternative, it is clear that for similar scenarios restoration of a WWTP is superior to building a replacement.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.