Effect of Nanobubble Injector–Based Aeration on the Performance of Wastewater Treatment Plant

Abstract

Increasing urbanization has put significant pressure on water and wastewater management. To reduce dependency on freshwater, treated sewage can be reutilized for various purposes such as irrigation, horticulture, washing, flushing, and so on. A wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) is a unit that improves the polluted raw wastewater into an environmentally friendly water (usually called treated sewage) through various treatment steps and electromechanical equipment. Nanobubble (NB) technology in the wastewater treatment industry is one of the promising concepts that uses gas-infused NBs to treat the wastewater for reducing the energy consumption and improving the treated water quality. In the current work, the efficiency of NB technology has been studied by upgrading an existing WWTP with NB injection for improving the treated effluent quality. The NB unit has been installed at the filter feed tank to treat the incoming sewage. Improvement in the wastewater treatment plant performance has been identified by analyzing the commonly used water quality parameters, i.e., pH, turbidity, total dissolved solids (TDS), conductivity, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS), total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN), NH3, total phosphorus (TP), and fecal coliform at inlet and outlet of the WWTP. The results are then compared with the baseline WWTP working without NB, and it was observed that the physiochemical parameters were reduced to acceptable levels after treatment with NB infusion.