lauren@kelman.ca

“It also simplifies things. There are less
solids moving through the plant because
you’ve added less salt that precipitates
those solids.”
The precipitated particles are recycled
and used again and again until they
reach their phosphate removal capacity.
Recycling with shear to break the particles
apart and expose the inner surfaces
binds even more phosphate. A solid/
liquid separation completes the process.
“Smaller particles have a greater
surface area,” Smith points out.
“Nanoparticles would work great for
treatment, except that they are a lot
harder to separate. He adds that if the
only change treatment plants made was to
increase mixing during chemical addition,
there would already be a potential 50%
to 80% increase in phosphate removal.
Recycling and shearing would bring it
down another 10% to 20%, an important
consideration when trying to meet strict
discharge limits such as those set for
particularly sensitive water bodies such
as Lake Simcoe.
The fundamental challenge is to
get the word out and convince both
engineers and operators that surface
complexation is in fact at the centre for
the chemical phosphate removal process.
Smith believes that the WEAO has an
important role to play in meeting that
challenge. In 2012, the Association
invited him to its Nutrient Removal
Conference to present his findings.
“It’s basically about letting people know
that you can do things slightly differently
than you have been doing them and get
good returns,” he explains. “Those types
of communication efforts are huge.”
He adds that it is important to expose
young highly qualified personnel (HQP)
to cutting edge science so that when they
are in the role of operating, designing
WWTPs or writing permit applications,
they can apply this knowledge.
At the same time, members of the
EnviroSim/Laurier team, including
Smith, have been involved in workshops
in Baltimore, Dallas, Chicago, Miami,
Seattle and Waterloo, attended by
world-renowned academic experts and
consulting engineers. The team’s past
10 years of work has also yielded 11
conference proceedings, 10 conference
presentations, four technical reports,
nine workshop presentations, eight
invited presentations (including several
international requests), three peerreviewed
papers, one non-peer reviewed
article (in the Summer 2011 issue of
INFLUENTS) and one book chapter
in a widely used wastewater manual
of practice.
All these results have been gratifying,
but the greatest reward, says Smith, has
been the application of his research.
“When you look back on your career,”
he explains, “you don’t simply want to
count papers and research dollars. You
want to think you had some real impact.
As an applied chemist, you want to
apply your chemistry to finding solutions
that are useful and worthwhile.”
That has certainly been the case so
far, and Smith’s research in this area is
far from over.
The mid-career chemist plans to
continue his quest to achieve ever-lower
concentrations of phosphorus in
treated effluent. His current work
includes not only research on enzymes
and nano-particles, but also the
removal of non-reactive phosphorus.
Phosphorus occurs in many
different forms. To achieve lower total
phosphorus levels, it is necessary to
convert non-reactive phosphorus into
reactive phosphorus so it can be removed
using conventional tertiary treatment
methods, where such methods can now
be optimized using our new knowledge
of surface complexation mechanisms
As new legislation requires WWTPs
to meet increasingly lower discharge
criteria for phosphorus, this research
will become even more critical. There is
no doubt that the work of Smith and
his team will continue to have an
impact on the wastewater industry
– and on protecting our environment –
for many years to come.
It is difficult to overestimate the impact this large project
and specifically Scott’s contribution for the environmental
industry – the use [of] proper chemical equilibrium is now
the standard in wastewater treatment plant modelling.
[C]hemical dosage points and dose can be optimized,
saving millions of dollars in design and operations costs
and reducing carbon foot print of these utilities.
– Dr. Imre Takács, CEO of Dynamita SARL,
a leading environmental process modeling company from France.
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INFLUENTS
Fall 2015
9