I am about to load a batch reactor with RAS sludge supplied from a municipal works to seed it. The sludge will be collected from the evening before and brought over n the morning. I'm guessing that this would mean some of it sitting unaerated for up to 12 hours

- Will this significantly harm the biomass?

- what max time in storage/transport would you recommend?

-on arrival, would you recommend strong feeding and aertion, or slowly slowly?

Ant tips on thi part o the process apperciated. Henry

Hi Henry,

12 h should be no problem. The lower the sludge loading rate on the donor plant, the longer the sludge can stay unaerated. I personally would not go over three days anaerated time

as Dwi suggested, it is smart to have the donor sludge microscopically checked for filaments. You do not want to import problems..

Upon arrival, i would give some good aeration (DO above 3 mg/L) for at least 0.5 to 1 hour, to wake the bugs up. The feeding level/regime: that is a good question... depends upon the sludge and where it came from (inversely, this may be a criterion to choose the donor plant!). Doing something similar as what it was used to looks like a good starting regime/strategy and go to a situation/regime where the recipient plant will work at after a couple of weeks after the start-up (sludge loading rate, feeding pattern ,...)

Many thanks for your replies, a further question has come up; the guy arranging the sludge supply now proposes to switch the source to a brewery WWTW - this my be more suitable as I guess the waste ther is carbon-rich and nutrient poor which would suit this site - but maybe top up with RAS from the municipal TW.

Apart from increasing the risk of filaments, importing fron 2 sources - is there any other downside to this? or might the added diversity help?

thanks, henry

Sludge Bacterial Seeding is often used to boost the biological system, or in situations when the whole procedure activities complete failing and incapable to malfunction natural waste properly.

Hello again,

ok so we managed to get hold of just enough sludge to give us a starting mlss of 1500 and want to grow it to around 8000 - problem is the factory ( food packaging, carbohydrate and fats) is well short of full production and we are well under the predicted COD and volumes of influent, with a limited time to get the plant up and running.

I don't have enough food for my poor microbes!

Can anyone suggest an emergency feedstock thet can be easily added to get things moving until the factory produces more waste?

thanks.

hebry

or, maintain the biomass you have now at the low loading and when the loading increases seed again to help boost the F/M quicker (stop wasting at that point too and slowly build back up)

Planning to Start the WWT in the Locality , This Water dept. Are really a  useless .  






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What I'd do is add a known weight of dog food to a known volume of water. (DI water or influent in which you know the COD). Let the dogfood dissolve (buy the soft stuff), mix it up and test the COD. From there you can do the calculations on how much to add for desired lbs of COD to feed the plant.

Just speculation, but I'd imagine the settling is fast with a turbid supernatant (pin floc) which is causing the turbidity. If you are recycling the effluent I wouldn't worry about the pump/ damage to the flocs (in the TSS)- they'll have plenty of time to recover in the aeration tank. I don't see how recycling a non-toxic effluent would introduce toxicity.

What does your wasting schedule/program look like? Could you describe it?

The conventional strategy to start up of municipal systems is to use sludge brought in from another plant. However there are many disadvantages with this option such as protection, acclimation, composition, transport & cost.