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SediLogic Technologies

Industrial pre-treatment

Refinery effluent plant

A nitrifying population lost from the plant, and an ammonia figure heading for a limit while it re-established.

$1,000,000

reported as avoided by recovering nitrification

Field resultNo method stated
Duty
Industrial pre-treatment
Sector
Industrial
Treatment window
Not published
What was counted
Nitrogen and ammonia
  • No before-and-after ammonia concentrations are published
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

A refinery effluent works treating about 2 million gallons a day through two surge ponds and three parallel activated-sludge basins.

02Before

How the material got there

The works had a history of losing nitrification to storm water carrying urea ammonium nitrate, with a typical recovery of ten days. An unusually large surge from a neighbouring chemical plant caused an upset that ran a hundred and fifty days, through which the refinery was in breach of its 2.6 mg/L permit. Seven million gallons of contaminated storm water had meanwhile accumulated in the surge ponds, at a chemical oxygen demand of 2,500 mg/L and ammonium nitrogen of 250 mg/L. Disposing of it was priced at a million dollars.

03Treatment

What was applied, and how

Two blends together — one to bring the COD and phenol load down so that conditions would support nitrification at all, and nitrifying cultures to rebuild the population itself. Treatability work was run first to establish whether the stored storm water could be fed into the influent stream without upsetting normal treatment.

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.

04Outcome

What followed

The stored storm water was processed through the refinery's own works rather than hauled away, and that is where the million dollars sits: a disposal cost not incurred.

At the start

Ammonia removal averaging 82 per cent, and 40 per cent through the prolonged upset. Recovery from an upset typically took ten days.

At the close

Ammonia removal at 92 per cent, with recovery taking three.

05Limits

What this record does not establish.

The publisher's own two figures disagree — its summary claims 93 per cent ammonia removal and its account 92. The lower is carried here. No before-and-after ammonia concentration is published at all, only efficiencies, so what the effluent actually did cannot be seen. Two products went in together and cannot be separated. Nothing was left untreated, the refinery is not named, and the million dollars is a cost avoided on somebody else's estimate.

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.

Liquid is intended for industrial systems with metered or poured dosing. If the target is settled sludge in a holding basin, discuss a sinking solid and the appropriate application method.

Our written dose tables cover wastewater lagoons. Industrial streams vary considerably, so other applications need a separate review and dose instructions for the specific use.

Talk to us about a pre-treatment stream

—Read next

The same duty, measured somewhere else.

  • Industrial pre-treatment

    Coking plant effluent treatment

    IndustrialWeeks

    29 to 86%

    ammonia removal

    Field resultConfounded

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

    • COD removal reported as improved over the same period

    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 ammoniaBOD and COD

  • 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.

This result came from a different plant. Your sludge composition and operating conditions need their own assessment. Send us your lagoon details for a dosing review; do not use the quantity on this page as your application rate.

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