Case study for analyzing nutrient-management technologies at three scales within a sewershed

ABSTRACT

Centralized wastewater treatment plants remove nutrients prior to discharge. Recently, technologies have become available to manage nutrients at different scales (individual buildings, neighborhoods/communities, or large centralized plants). Nutrient-recovery technologies applied upstream of the centralized treatment plant may affect both the wastewater flow rates and the nutrient fluxes reaching the plant. This study evaluates how the introduction of such upstream technologies affects the treatment efficiency and economics of nutrient management across a sewershed. Employing treatment technologies upstream from the centralized plant that receives highly loaded municipal wastewater could reduce nitrogen loading to the mainstream treatment train by over 50%, which generally reduces treatment plant effluent concentrations and saves money. In extreme cases, excessive upstream removal of nutrients can negatively affect biological treatment processes at the centralized treatment plant. Treatment of sidestreams at the centralized plant would likely be effective in reducing phosphorus loading, but not nitrogen loading, to the mainstream process.

KEYWORDS:

• Sewershed
• resource recovery
• nutrient management
• House of Quality
• Hillsborough County
• Florida

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Luke Mulford from Hillsborough County for his insights and feedback.

Disclosure statement

No competing financial interests exist.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2021.1893361.

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by USEPA grant 83556901. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the grantee and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USEPA.