A method for treating wastewater by using a coagulant that aggregates a phosphorus-containing substance. The method includes executing a reaction phase having a biological treatment phase and a subsequent chemical treatment phase. The chemical treatment phase includes the first substep of mixing the wastewater while injecting a predetermined dose of the coagulant into the basin in order for the coagulant to contact and coagulate the phosphorus-containing substances. The injection of the dose of the binding compound into the basin is performed during a time period equal to or more than a time period required to accomplish two mixing turnovers of the wastewater and equal to or less than a time period required to accomplish seven mixing turnovers of the wastewater. The second substep includes mixing the wastewater in order to flocculate the coagulated substance.

A method for managing a wastewater treatment process. The method includes at least the steps of measuring an amount of at least one nitrogen-containing substance in the influent wastewater (CN, influent), and determining an amount of phosphorous to be removed from the influent wastewater (CP, influent) based on the measured amount of at least one nitrogen-containing substance in the influent wastewater (CN, influent).

Disclosed herein are methods and systems for removing carbon dioxide (CO.sub.2) from water and quantifying the carbon so removed, thus facilitating valuation of that carbon for schemes (e.g., Kyoto agreement) that attach financial rewards for capture, sequestration or removal of carbon or CO.sub.2.

We describe a method of determining a food-to-biomass ratio in an aqueous fluid the method comprising: providing an aqueous fluid comprising viable biomass and food for said biomass, and wherein there is insufficient available food to sustain all said viable biomass; using a sensor (for example a respirometer or a sensor for sensing an amount of ammonia, ammonium, nitrates or nitrites) to determine an amount of food in said aqueous fluid available to said biomass; determining a measure of viable biomass in said aqueous fluid by measuring polarisability of viable biomass cells in an AC electric field; and determining a food-to-biomass ratio from said amount of food and said measure of viable biomass.

A method for the treatment of organic waste, the method comprising alternating steps of anaerobic digestion and aerobic composting conducted in a single reactor vessel, wherein at or about the completion of the anaerobic digestion step at least a portion of any free draining fluid from the reactor vessel is directed for reuse in subsequent anaerobic digestion steps, and solids remaining in the reactor vessel from the anaerobic digestion step are subjected to a dewatering step from which a liquid is obtained that is ultimately also directed, at least in part, for reuse in subsequent anaerobic digestion steps. A method for the management of biology in a batch process, wherein the batch process is an anaerobic digestion process, is also described.

A biofilm process is disclosed for treating wastewater containing readily biodegradable dissolved organic matter GP (measured as chemical oxygen demand or COD) and producing surplus biomass from the biofilm process that includes an enhanced polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) content. The process comprises directing a wastewater influent containing the readily biodegradable COD (RBCOD) into a biofilm unit process. The PHA content of surplus biomass is enhanced by controlling for a decreased biofilm process specific organic loading rate in combination with controlling phosphorus loading rates relative to the process RBCOD loading rates: (1) controlling the wastewater influent phosphorus loading rate to the biofilm unit process includes maintaining an average RBCOD/P ratio of the influent that is between 200 and 800 g/g; (2) decreasing the process specific organic loading rate includes producing a biofilm unit process effluent having readily separable mixed liquor volatile suspended solids (RS-MLVSS); and (3) separating a portion of the RS-MLVSS from the biofilm unit process effluent and recycling at least a portion of the separated RS-MLVSS back to the biofilm unit process. The combination of the RBCOD/P control and specific loading rate control maintains, on average, the surplus biomass with a PHA content that is greater than 30% gPHA/g VSS.

Integrated methanogenic anaerobic reactor and membrane bioreactor, and method for eliminating organic matter and nitrogen in urban or industrial wastewater, preferably with COD concentrations between 150 and 5000 mg/L and where the eliminations of total nitrogen that occur are between 15 and 50 mg/L, at temperatures above 15° C. The wastewater treatment takes place thanks to three stages of treatment: methanogenic anaerobic stage, anoxic stage with biofilms and suspended biomass and aerobic filtration stage with biofilms and suspended biomass.

An intelligent detection system of effluent total nitrogen (TN) based on fuzzy transfer learning algorithm belongs to the field of intelligent detection technology. To detect the TN concentration, the artificial neural network can be used to model wastewater treatment process due to the nonlinear approximation ability and learning ability. However, wastewater treatment process has the characteristic of time-varying dynamics and external disturbance, artificial neural network prediction method cannot acquire sufficient data to ensure the accuracy of TN prediction, and data loss and data deficiency will make the prediction model invalid. The invention proposed an intelligent detection system of effluent total nitrogen based on fuzzy transfer learning algorithm; the proposed system contains several functional modules, including detection instrument, data acquisition, data storage and TN prediction. For the TN prediction module, the fuzzy transfer learning algorithm build the fuzzy neural network based intelligent prediction model, which the parameters are adjusted by the transfer learning method.

There are provided processes for treating wastewater. The processes can comprise treating a mixture comprising the wastewater and an activated sludge, in a single reactor, with an electric current having a density of less than about 55 A/m.sup.2, by means of at least one anode and at least one cathode that define therebetween an electrical zone for treating the mixture; exposing the mixture to an intermittent ON/OFF electrical exposure mode to the electric current in which an OFF period of time is about 1 to about 10 times longer than an ON period of time; and maintaining an adequate oxidation-reduction potential in the single reactor. Such processes allow for substantial removal of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus from the wastewater in the single reactor of various forms and for obtaining another mixture comprising a treated wastewater and solids.

A process for the biological treatment of wastewater in which the performance of a conventional activated sludge system is improved by adding an aerobic granular biomass system in a hybrid parallel process configuration. Waste biomass and suspended material from the aerobic granular biomass system is introduced into the conventional activated sludge system for this purpose. In the hybrid process configuration the advantages of both systems are combined to produce new advantages, while drawbacks of the individual systems are reduced to great extent.