Volume 13, Issue 1 - Ontario Onsite Wastewater Association

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12 13 th Annual Onsite Wastewater Conference & Exhibition New Technology WATERCLEAN TM Onsite Wastewater Treatment Using Advanced Oxidation Destroys pathogens - Safe for people Reduces Nutrients - Safe for the Environment Process Controlled - Discharge Verified Smallest Environmental Footprint Investment and Franchise Opportunities Available www.waterclean.ca Info@waterclean.ca Innovative solutions to meet your needs and enhance your bottom line. Five Peaks oers a full line of portable sanitation products that provide the best possible solutions to help you grow your business. Our product line includes standard, recirculating ush, fresh water ush, the allnew redesigned ADA Compliant portable restrooms, inside and outside hand washing sinks along with many accessories and support products. To order or for more information please contact us at 866.293.1502 or visit our new website at www.vepeaks.net. vepeaks.net 866.293.1502 231.830.8099
13 th Annual Onsite Wastewater Conference & Exhibition New Technology for OWTS WATERCLEAN by Thomas W. Bain, P. Eng. | www.waterclean.ca Summary: The use of Onsite Wastewater Treatment Systems (OWTS) is increasing in North America. Unfortunately, the technologies involved with OWTS have not evolved quickly enough to prevent cross contamination of well water or nutrient loading of our lakes and rivers. Additionally, the uncontrolled discharge from private OWTS will become the largest contributor of Compounds of Emerging Concern (CEC) to the environment. A research project began in 2000 to investigate these challenges and to find a solution to address this situation by reducing pathogens, nutrients, and CECs. The result of this project is the WATERCLEAN. It is similar in operation to a washing machine with a fill cycle, a wash cycle, a discharge cycle, it uses ozone in place of soap, and it washes wastewater instead of clothes. Introduction: Onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTS) include systems that serve small communities, resorts, industry, and individual private residences not serviced by municipal infrastructure. It is this last group, individual private residences, with which we are particularly concerned because existing technologies have limited performance and a complete lack of supervision. The vast majority of these systems are septic systems. Septic systems appeared over 100 years ago on farm properties with large tracts of virgin earth. These systems include a septic tank (collector/concentrator), some form of leaching bed (receiver), and the surrounding soil (distributor). This is primitive technology including anaerobic digestion followed by aeration and natural adsorption by the earth. These systems provide little disinfection (pathogens) and limited denutrification (carbon, phosphorus, and nitrogen). (Leverenz et al., 2002)(1). This poor performance is to be expected because without recirculation, the process is essentially backwards. Regulations for these systems have not changed appreciably in over 40 years. The Ontario Rural Wastewater Centre at the University of Guelph states, “There are over 1 million septic systems in Ontario alone…High levels of rural groundwater contamination indicates that many of these systems are working below acceptable levels and changes are required to alleviate the problem.” “Water quality problems in the rural portions of Canada are large and occur throughout the country.” (Joy et al., 2001)(2). Increasingly, this primitive technology has been used on much smaller tracts of land and waterfront properties. The result has been increased contamination of wells with pathogens and overload of water bodies with nutrients. Once these contaminants are in groundwater, they eventually reach rivers and lakes. In other words, once we have a pollution problem, we may be only a step away from a water supply problem (Environment Canada – Groundwater Contamination)(3). The need for new technology was clear. In response to this need, enhancements were designed to operate in conjunction with traditional systems. These included both media bioreactors and membrane bioreactors. Those add-ons provided improved disinfection, good reduction of suspended solids and carbonaceous compounds and fair reduction of nitrogen, with circulation, but little reduction of phosphorus. While these systems were tested on sewage and provided acceptable results, they were expected to process septage, and the results were not very good. The emerging concern over compounds including disinfection byproducts (DBPs), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and pharmaceuticals (PHARMA) in both drinking water and the environment, has created a whole new dimension for the needed capabilities of private residential OWTS. Existing technology, both traditional and enhanced, have little chance of effectively reducing these compounds in a timely way. Without new technology, collectively the uncontrolled discharge from these private residential OWTS, will become the largest contributor of compounds of emerging concern (CECs) to the environment. This contamination of our finite sources of water cannot be allowed to continue. New Technology New solutions are required to address the concerns noted above. The following list covers many of the criteria that need to be addressed by new technologies. Table 1: Criteria for New Technology 1 environmentally sustainable 2 rapid and not dependent on chemicals or temperature 3 measurable and verifiable 4 process monitored and controlled (SCADA) 5 remotely supervised and networked 6 energy efficient 7 sizeable and portable 8 price sensitive and available from multiple sources 9 meet the needs of the marketplace 10 provide for a wide range of applications Generally, new technology will need to be faster, better, and with a smaller environmental footprint. The Project The WATERCLEAN project was undertaken to determine if it was possible to fulfill the draft criteria in Table I with currently available off the shelf components. Since other treatment processes show little ability to remove pharmaceuticals and ozonation showed great promise for the removal of those components, (Jasim et al., 2006)(4) ozonation was chosen as the treatment method. This was an applied science project relying on the results of the research and investigation of pure science over many years. This involved the construction and test of a series of first, second, and third generation prototypes beginning in 2000. System Design The system design approach was to keep the system as simple as possible yet provide the needed performance in a cost effective way. As well, the system needed to be fully automatic, as it would be located on private property with no operator other than the property owner, supported by the installation contractor. It would need to operate when needed and contend with a variable heterogeneous influent. We learned that there were a number of system parameters which could be utilized to deal with a wide range of influent. These include: batch size, recirculation rate (flow), processing time, operating pressure, time under pressure, process monitoring and control of discharge. Given some basic information on the source and with knowledge of the destination, these system parameters can be adjusted to provide the desired effluent. System Operation The WATERCLEAN is a wastewater washing machine, much like the washing machine for washing clothes. The process includes a fill cycle, a Continued on page 15 … 13
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Volume 13, Issue 1 - Ontario Onsite Wastewater Association

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