Wastewater lagoons
Suspended solids and phosphorus in a manure lagoon at concentrations that constrained where the contents could go.
reduction in total suspended solids
01The plant
An anaerobic manure lagoon holding the raw slurry of a commercial swine operation.
02Before
The lagoon was measured on one thing: how far a full effluent panel could be pulled down. Suspended solids ran 37,500 mg/L, chemical oxygen demand 66,600 and biochemical oxygen demand 11,850. Settleable solids were pegged at 1,000 mL/L — the top of the scale on a standard Imhoff cone, meaning the slurry never separated at all. Phosphorus, which usually decides what an operation may do with its effluent, sat at 363.25 mg/L. Dissolved oxygen of 0.2 mg/L and pH 8.0 confirmed what kind of lagoon it was.
03Treatment
A drop-in tablet form that sinks and dissolves on its own, so there was no mixing, no dosing equipment and no added labour. The constraint the site set was that nothing else could change — no aeration, no dredging, no new equipment and no interruption to normal loading — so the lagoon ran exactly as it always had.
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.
04Method
A baseline sample drawn before anything went in, and a second at forty-one days. Both were analysed by an environmental laboratory accredited by the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation, following Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater, 23rd edition. The sampling itself was done by the operation rather than by the laboratory.
05Outcome
The settleable-solids reading explains the rest of the panel. At the start the cone held a single flocculent mass with no clear liquid above it after the standard settling hour; at forty-one days the same test gave a distinct sludge layer with clear liquid over it. The lagoon's own level dropped as the blanket shrank, so storage came back without the lagoon being drained.
At the start
Suspended solids 37,500 mg/L, COD 66,600, BOD 11,850, phosphorus 363.25, total nitrogen 4,100, settleable solids 1,000 mL/L.
At the close
Suspended solids 3,400 mg/L, COD 10,720, BOD 5,699, phosphorus 54, total nitrogen 3,012.5, settleable solids 3 mL/L.
06Limits
Day zero is a baseline, not an untreated control, and the publisher says so plainly — this is a before-and-after at one lagoon rather than treated against untreated. The sampling was done by the operation and the analysis by the accredited laboratory, which is exactly where a sampling difference would enter and not be visible in the result. The reduction goals quoted are the operation's own internal targets and not a regulatory limit. Six weeks of an anaerobic lagoon is six weeks of weather and loading that nobody recorded.
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.
—What we would supply
This is the duty SediLogic supplies and sizes. Which article depends on where the material sits: Sedivore Spike is the denser solid and carries down through depth to an established blanket, Sedivore Puck is a smaller unit that spreads a calculated dose across the bed, and SediLogic Maintain is a soluble pouch for load carried in the water column — with Sedivore Polar for that same duty where the water runs cold enough to stall a standard blend.
A quantity for your own lagoon comes from the dosing planner, sized against your dimensions and loading from the manufacturer's written dose method. It does not come from the figure on this page, which was set for a lagoon that is not yours.
—Read next
Wastewater lagoons
Municipal30 days
effluent suspended solids, from a starting figure that was never recorded
A forty-year-old lagoon carrying heavy accumulated solids and an effluent suspended-solids figure the resort could not hold.
Wastewater lagoons
Agricultural4 months
reduction in total suspended solids
A lagoon loaded well past what it was built for, carrying a foam layer across most of the surface and blocking the irrigation draw.
Wastewater lagoons
Municipal24 weeks
of accumulated solids digested
Just over five feet of accumulated solids in the primary aerated lagoon, assessed at 2,365 dry tons. The plant wanted a route that did not involve dredging.
Your lagoon next
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.
