Supercritical UV™ is highly effective on waste stabilisation pond effluent
Waste stabilisation ponds are used in tens of thousands of applications around the globe. But while ponds continue to offer many advantages there is increasing need to upgrade treatment performance. In particular, trying to meet increasingly demanding disinfection requirements can be difficult due to factors such as weather variability which impacts on the naturally occurring disinfection mechanisms that occur within ponds.
Compared to secondary treated effluents, pond effluents typically have high effluent solids and low UV transmittance (UVT). Because NovoLabs™ Supercritical UV™ technology (SCUV) has been repeatedly proven to offer exceptional disinfection performance in situations that conventional UV systems can find difficult, multiple municipalities have asked NovoLabs™ for onsite SCUV trials to be conducted.
Case Study A
Effluent from a town of 1600 people that is treated via a waste stabilisation pond and a subsequent filter bed required further disinfection. This effluent averaged a UVT of 21%, a TSS of 50mg/l and had an E. coli concentration of 34,235 MPN/100mL.
NovoLabs™ SCUV system easily achieved E. coli concentrations of <130 MPN/100mL and then using Novolabs™ ‘high-power’ option, the SCUV system achieved E. coli concentrations of ≤10 MPN/100mL.
Case Study B
NovoLabs™ SCUV test unit was set up to analyse the treatment efficiency on a waste stabilisation maturation pond serving a town with a population of ~5000. The effluent had a TSS of 76 g/m3 and a UVT of just 7.0%! The E. coli concentration in the maturation pond liquid averaged 11,319 MPN/100mL.
With the standard-power setting, NovoLabs™ SCUV system achieved E. coli concentrations of <180 MPN/100mL across all tests apart from one sample during a rain event that was 1,573 MPN/100mL. However, under the high-power setting, NovoLabs™ SCUV system consistently achieved E. coli concentrations ≤20 MPN/100mL.
