Industrial pre-treatment

Coking plant effluent treatment

A nitrifying population that would not establish itself, leaving ammonia removal at less than a third of what the permit assumed.

29 to 86%

ammonia removal

Field resultConfounded

Duty: Industrial pre-treatment
Sector: Industrial
Treatment window: Weeks
What was counted: Nitrogen and ammonia, BOD and COD

COD removal reported as improved over the same period

Aboveground steel storage tanks at an industrial facility. — Illustration — aboveground tanks at an industrial site, not the plant described on this page.

01The plant

What was being treated

The secondary treatment stage of a coking plant, taking the wastewater left behind by ammonia distillation.

02Before

How the material got there

The stage was new and starting up. Its biomass was thin, organic strength through it was high and unsteady, and the nitrifying population that any ammonia figure depends on had not established — removal was running below a third of what the plant needed.

03Treatment

What was applied, and how

Two stages, deliberately in that order. A broad organic-degrading blend went in first to build biomass, form floc and settle the effluent COD; only once that had held were nitrifying cultures introduced.

Every result in this library was measured at an operating plant treating with one of the formulations SediLogic supplies, over the window stated above. It is a field result published as reported, not a controlled trial we ran.

04Sizing

What the quantity was set against

Phased against the state of the biomass rather than against a volume. The second stage was held back until the first had done its work, because nitrifying organisms will not establish in a system still fighting its carbon load — a basis of sequence, not of quantity.

05Method

How the result was established

Effluent COD and effluent ammonia nitrogen tracked through startup, with removal efficiency computed against the influent.

06Outcome

What followed

The stage then rode out swings in influent COD, ammonia shock loading and water above 40°C, returning to normal each time — which is the part the operators valued, more than the headline.

At the start

Ammonia removal at 29 per cent, effluent ammonia nitrogen averaging 61.2 mg/L, effluent COD unstable.

At the close

Ammonia removal at 86 per cent, effluent ammonia nitrogen averaging 8.3 mg/L, and effluent COD below 300 mg/L and holding. Nitrification is reported as established within five days of the second stage going in.

07Limits

What this record does not establish.

The dosing was not the only thing that changed. The carbon-to-nitrogen ratio of the influent was managed and system loading was raised in steps as the biomass improved, both inside the same window, so 29 to 86 per cent cannot be attributed to what was applied alone: a startup improves as it is nursed, and this one was nursed. Nothing was left untreated and no plant is named.

Only the volatile organic fraction of a sludge responds to any of this. Grit, sand, silt, mineral precipitates and plastics remain at any dose, here and everywhere else.

Nitrifying organisms do not survive drying. No product in SediLogic's dry range addresses an ammonia or total-nitrogen permit, and this record is published as part of the field record rather than as an offer.

—What we would supply

For this duty, in our range.

SediLogic Liquid is the article in the range that reaches this — a concentrate for systems a solid cannot be dosed into, which covers most of what sits upstream of an industrial outfall. Where the target is instead an accumulated blanket in a holding basin, the sinking solids are the right format and the lagoon products apply.

Liquid concentrateSediLogic LiquidDosing points and flowing systems that take a metered liquid

SediLogic holds a written dose table for wastewater lagoons and for no other duty. Industrial loads are also the least alike of anything on this site — a rate set for one plant's effluent means very little at the next — so a quantity here is settled with a person, against your own stream.

Talk to us about a pre-treatment stream

—Read next

The same duty, measured somewhere else.

Industrial pre-treatment
Refinery effluent plant
IndustrialNot published
$1,000,000
reported as avoided by recovering nitrification
Field resultNo method stated
A nitrifying population lost from the plant, and an ammonia figure heading for a limit while it re-established.
- No before-and-after ammonia concentrations are published
Nitrifying organisms do not survive drying. No product in SediLogic's dry range addresses an ammonia or total-nitrogen permit, and this record is published as part of the field record rather than as an offer.
Nitrogen and ammonia
Industrial pre-treatment
Landfill leachate treatment, Chengdu, China
Industrial26 hours
850 to 4mg/L
ammonia, in twenty-six hours
Field result
Leachate arriving at the treatment plant with an ammonia concentration in the high hundreds of milligrams per litre.
- 93 per cent of the reduction inside the first ten hours
Nitrifying organisms do not survive drying. No product in SediLogic's dry range addresses an ammonia or total-nitrogen permit, and this record is published as part of the field record rather than as an offer.
Nitrogen and ammonia
Industrial pre-treatment
Petrochemical effluent plant
IndustrialNot published
Under 1mg/L
ammonia, from six to eight
Field resultNo method stated
Ammonia running at six to eight milligrams per litre after the plant's nitrifying population failed.
- Bench data recorded alongside the plant figures
Nitrifying organisms do not survive drying. No product in SediLogic's dry range addresses an ammonia or total-nitrogen permit, and this record is published as part of the field record rather than as an offer.
Nitrogen and ammonia

All field results

Your lagoon next

This was measured somewhere else.

A different plant, a different loading and a different sludge. What decides your result is how much of your own accumulation is organic and treatable, and whether the dose is sized against the lagoon in front of us rather than read off this page. Tell us the dimensions and we will size it.

Get a dosing plan See the products