About the Webinar
Water Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF) operators are continuing to be challenged with process problems that previously had no solution until now.
Over the last couple of decades, there have been two major shifts in municipal wastewater characteristics. First, water conservation and low-flow appliances necessitated by water scarcity and drought have concentrated wastewater contaminants over time. Second, the increased use of surfactant-based products like surface cleaners and liquid soaps and detergents, especially after the pandemic, paired with fats, oils, and grease (FOG), interfere with nearly all wastewater treatment processes because they impede solids separation, oxygen transfer, and nutrient removal, and consume disinfection chemicals. These changes in wastewater characteristics have created new operational challenges and have increased the cost-to-treat wastewater.
Surfactants enter wastewater from many sources, including household cleaning products, personal care products, and industrial processes. Surfactants are compounds that have both hydrophilic (water-loving) and hydrophobic (water-hating) parts. When enough surfactants are present, they form micelles, which are aggregates of surfactant molecules with their hydrophobic tails facing inwards and hydrophilic heads facing outwards. Micelles are very stable in water and are difficult to remove using conventional treatment processes.
Micelles are colloidal structures that can trap other organics, such as proteins and fats, oils and grease (FOG). FOG and surfactants combine in wastewater to form a stable emulsion that disrupts wastewater treatment processes leading to inefficiency, operational challenges, process upsets, and increased operating costs. Colloids contribute to the slowly biodegradable fraction of chemical oxygen demand (COD). The slowly biodegradable fraction of COD is the part of COD that is not easily broken down by bacteria. This results in higher effluent biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), COD, TOC, and nutrient levels which poses major challenges to WRRFs and water reuse facilities.
Moleaer’s technology uses air and water to generate in-situ chemistry in the form of nanobubbles that selectively target contaminants that cause inefficiencies and odors in wastewater treatment. Nanobubbles enable process intensification by breaking down slowly biodegradable contaminants like surfactants and FOG to more readily biodegradable compounds, making the wastewater easier to treat.
In this webinar, Andrea White, P.E., Moleaer’s Global Director of Water Process Engineering and John Crisman, Moleaer's Senior Water Process Engineer, discuss the challenges that surfactants pose to wastewater treatment and how nanobubble treatment addresses these challenges. They also share how nanobubbles are being applied to reduce the cost-to-treat wastewater by improving solids removal, effluent water quality, and biogas quality while also reducing process upsets, foam, odors, and energy and chemical demand.
