WASTE WATER TREATMENT
Organic Waste Water (sewage, palm oil mill effluent, waste water from industrial food processing) is typically treated using biological-physical-chemical processes to achieve a final effluent that meets regulatory standards of quality and can be discharged to existing waterways. These treatment plants are usually capex intensive and rely on a significant power consumption and chemical inputs.
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The EcoEdge solution using VRM products (Bio-Starter® and Bio-Fort®) is able to biologically reduce the Biological and Chemical Oxygen Demand (BOD and COD) in most organic waste water, by as much as 85-95%. The application is made by spraying the product at the early stage of the waste water treatment process and allowing for sufficient retention time for the microbes to undertake the biological process. The secondary and tertiary treatment processes (e.g. settling tanks, filters) can then be continued to achieve the final effluent quality.
The sludge extracted from the waste water treatment plant can then be fermented in a Groundswell pile for conversion to Humisoil as a valuable commodity that can be used on your farm or sold on the open marke
Cost
Chemical Oxygen Demand
Species
Diversity
Challenges We Address
The digestion of wastes in an aqueous environment such as municipal level wastewater treatment facilities and networks are commonly seen as a mathematical equation involving normal parameters of time, space and oxygen input.
Wherever the treatment of wastewater is seen as predominantly an engineering and chemical process, treatment plants tend to become highly sensitive to seasonal or sudden variations in volume or influent characteristics.
A common symptom of this instability is odour generation and direct discharge of sewage, representing increased processing costs financially, ecologically and socially.
Reduce the cost of your current process for wastewater management by chosing a low cost biological approach
Odour
Reduce odour by focusing on the incubating microbial photosynthesis
Health & Safety
Improve the health and safety of employees by using simple, non-chemical methods for wastewater management
Biological Oxygen Demand
Reduce BOD by 85-95%
Reduce COD by 85-95%
Improve the health and diversity of species both in and around the wastewater pond
Potato Starch Wastewater
VRM products were applied to a 300,00kL pond for the largest agricultural group in China that is also a State Owned Enterprise. The farm is also the largest potato farm in Asia and one of the largest starch producers and soybean oil producers. The wastewater has a very high carbohydrate content coming from starch processing with protein floating sediment, hence the very high starting COD (25k+) and H2S odours were unbearable. Crops were being killed and land productivity was permanently damaged from the use of the wastewater as irrigation.​
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If the water could not be fixed, or removed or used before each annual harvest and starch processing season in September/August, then potatoes would go to waste. The R3vive program started firstly on a trial pond that was only 100kL to demonstrate. We sprayed Starter and Seed at a dilution of 1:1:30, 1L each Starter and Seed per 20kL of wastewater. Since the immediate problem was odour, and the time resource is more than 270 days for VRM to ferment wastewater per year, doses are adjusted downwards to take advantage of a longer span of time.
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It was found that the VRM treated pond, compared to all other ponds of similar sizes (at least 13 similar ones in the area) had a huge COD reduction from 20,000+ to sub 5,000 within 90 days, and thereafter they stopped measuring as the water was used successfully for irrigation without crop death. In fact irrigated areas show reduced fertiliser needs due to the nutrients being provided by the treated water.
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What was interesting was that the COD drop was higher than mechanically aerated ponds burning energy to bring COD down through oxidation. This was achieved even prior to using further simple techniques.
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The Chinese came up with innovative ways to spray evenly on target areas on the pond using floating old tyres given the immense pond size could not be covered by land based high pressure pumps. The water had turned from pitch black H2S to a light green/light orange. The dredging of sludges were added to Humisoil® pile with dry corn crop residues to make their own Humisoil® and the dredging led to increased pond capacity. Thematically, converting problematic organic material to benefit the soil cost less than alternatives to do either one of the two. And this effect has grown significantly given rising energy and fertiliser costs on both sides of the equation.
Ecological Changes
Visibly and quantitatively demonstrate changes in water quality particularly in TSS, BOD, COD and SVI (or equivalent), as well as health and diversity of lifeforms in and around the water body.
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Safely digest and allow for the gradual removal of accumulated sludges and biosolids towards conversion into agricultural outputs. This increases the capacity of the lagoon significantly as a buffer against seasonal volumetric spikes in wastewater inflow.​
