Transformation of Waste Stabilization Ponds: Reengineering of an Obsolete Sewage Treatment System

Abstract

Waste Stabilization Ponds (WSPs) are commonly used for sewage treatment. These systems are composed of a series of ponds: (1) anaerobic ponds, (2) facultative ponds, and (3) maturation ponds. WSPs generally produce good-quality effluent in terms of organic matter and pathogen removal, but their application has disadvantages. The most serious disadvantages are a long retention time, the release of biogas, and the impossibility of removing nutrients. A promising alternative to the use of WSPs is replacing the anaerobic pond and facultative pond with an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor, with the advantages of greatly reducing the retention time and the biogas capture. The post-treatment ponds of the UASB reactor effluent involve oxygen production and the biological consumption of carbon dioxide, which raises the pH. An experimental investigation showed that it is possible to use polishing ponds in a sequential batch regime instead of continuous flow. This modification accelerates the decay of pathogens and accelerates the increase in pH, which, in turn, facilitates the removal of nitrogen and phosphorus. This produces a good-quality effluent with low concentrations of biodegradable organic material, nutrients, and pathogens. This good-quality effluent is obtained in a system without energy consumption or auxiliary materials and with a much smaller area than conventional stabilization ponds.

Performance Evaluation of Waste Stabilization Pond for Treatment of Wastewater from a Tertiary Institution Campus Located in Jos North Local Government Area, Plateau State, Nigeria

“…Furthermore, the results of the final effluent quality obtained from the Maturation Pond (Table 3) reveal that the system was able reduce the BOD by 81%, COD by 73.6%, Total Coliforms by 75.8%, Total Solids by 61.9%, Total Nitrogen by 70.3%, Chloride by 56.3%, Phosphate by 60%, and Ammonia by 71.1% This percentage removal not withstanding, the effluent quality did not meet the designated standard for Total Nitrogen and Phoshate removal. This corroborates the fact that WSP is not very efficient for nutrient removal (Sells et al, 2018;Lahiri and Ghosh, 2018;dos Santos and van Haandel, 2021). More so, an overall system treatment efficiency of 77.78 % was achieved by the WSP model.…”

Applications of Up-Flow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) and Characteristics of Its Microbial Community: A Review of Bibliometric Trend and Recent Findings

“…in UASB effluent and obtained good removal rates (2-log) treating it with dissolved air flotation. In another case, dos Santos and van Haandel [20] used waste stabilization ponds to treat UASB effluent pointed out an acceleration of the decay of pathogens and the removal of nutrients.…”

Preliminary Study on Oxygen Transfer for Leachate Wastewater Treatment

“…The generally used technique to treat leachate in Indonesia is stabilization ponds (E Noerfitriyani et al, 2018;Eki Noerfitriyani et al, 2018;Oktiawan et al, 2020). This technique has weaknesses, such as the detention time required is quite long, so the land required is quite large, while the land is difficult to obtain, especially in urban areas (dos Santos & van Haandel, 2021). In addition, the leachate character will change according to the age of the waste generation, so the processing must adapt to the leachate character.…”