Bioaugmentation Wastewater Treatment

Enhance biological waste treatment for environmental compliance with wastewater bioaugmentation treatment

Controlling organic contaminants and ammonia are key objectives of many wastewater treatment plants. Ensuring the healthy growth of beneficial microorganisms is critical to the efficient operation of secondary treatment systems, which are designed to remove organic contaminants and (sometimes) nitrogen.

Veolia offers a complete package of products and services to help support healthy and efficient microorganism growth and improve performance in your wastewater system. This section focuses on our bioaugmentation products, but our secondary system optimization solutions include our foam control and settling aids as well.

Download the BioPlus* fact sheet

Product Highlight
Features & Benefits
Case Studies
FAQs

Product Highlight

BioPlus* bioaugmentation solutions

Veolia’s BioPlus products comprise a portfolio of specially formulated blends of naturally occurring, but adapted, high-performance microorganisms, with enzymes and nutrient supplements. In addition, there are blends of bacteria, enzymes and surfactants for oil and grease clean-up and a range of nutrient-only products

Our products are used to enhance the biological degradation of organics and ammonia in a variety of secondary wastewater treatment systems. The systems that can be treated range from classic aerobic activated sludge plants, lagoons, bio-filters, MBRs, MBBRs, to UASB and other anaerobic treatment systems. Many of the products contain facultative organisms and oxygen donors, allowing use in low oxygen conditions within aerobic treatment systems.

Microorganisms used are naturally occurring bacteria and fungi that have been isolated from the environment and concentrated and stabilized for use in wastewater treatment.

BioPlus technology includes products for:

Enhancing COD removal in most aerobic industrial wastewater treatment systems
Degradation of Fats, Oil, and Grease (FOG) and other food processing type COD
Removal of COD in anaerobic reactors and lagoons
Enhancing organic sludge degradation at the bottom of lagoons and ponds
Enhancing or recovering ammonia removal in the nitrification process
Enhancing the removal of COD from pulp and paper making operations
Maintaining grease traps
Enhancing general biomass health with the addition of dedicated nutrient supplements

BioHealth* optimization solution

Complementing the BioPlus technology are Veolia’s BioHealth and InSight* monitoring tools. BioHealth is a second-generation ATP-based test used in conjunction with BioPlus bioaugmentation and primary treatment, to quickly and directly measure influent wastewater toxicity and reactor biomass activity and health.

Coupled with sophisticated analytical and trends software packages, including real-time monitoring via InSight*, primary and secondary treatment can be cost-effectively improved to levels unachievable previously. Our approach is to proactively monitor system health and make operational adjustments and biological enhancements at the earliest signs of stress. The use of BioHealth and Insight allows our service team, in collaboration with operators, to take early action before serious problems develop. This proactive approach differentiates Veolia and results in the lowest cost of operation of biological treatment systems.

Features & Benefits

Benefits of wastewater bioaugmentation

Veolia’s BioPlus bioaugmentation and cleaning products, used together with Veolia’s operational and monitoring recommendations, will provide the following features and benefits:

Enhances microbial populations, making them more stable and resistant to upsets
Provides faster system start-up and recovery from upsets
Improves contaminant degradation
Provides a range of nutrients, stimulating growth under a wide array of conditions
Lowers treatment costs for discharge, or reuse
Improves community image, by improving the quality of effluent being discharged
Minimizes the potential for fines and/or extra compliance costs from regulatory authorities, by improving treatment plant reliability

Case Studies

Refinery solves treatment upset with BioPlus & BioHeath technologies

A west coast refinery suffered a wastewater treatment upset after accidentally releasing a large quantity of slop oil into their wastewater system.

Chemical plant incurs savings with advanced monitoring & bioaugmentation

A US chemical plant was experiencing high effluent BOD and was shipping off wastewater to achieve compliance.

BioPlus reduces odor, fines & saves US$15,000 annually for hotel chain

In a large metropolitan area hotel chain overloaded the city sewer system with oil and grease.

Food processing plant meets discharge limits & cleans up lagoon using BioPlus bioaugmentation products

A food processing plant faced regulatory action due to high BOD, TSS and grease (FOG) in its discharge and a highly contaminated lagoon that emitted unpleasant odors.

Gas plant avoids maintenance disruption in wastewater disposal costs using bioaugmentation

A large gas plant operation had an equalization pond which was filled with plant wastewater and a high level of COD from bundle washings and chemical dumps.

Bioaugmentation program improves wastewater treatment results & plant's environmental image

At this Midwestern food manufacturer, cheese-processing units generate wastewater that contains fats, oils and greases (FOG), and other soluble organic by-products.

BioHealth* testing provides $120,000 in disposal savings for North

A refinery safely processed oil contaminated wastewater while avoiding 3rd party disposal costs using Veolia’s BioHealth biological treatment monitoring technology.

FAQs

What is bioaugmentation?

Bioaugmentation is the practice of enhancing the performance of microbial populations being used for wastewater treatment, by adding bacterial strains with specific degradative abilities, and/or addition of missing nutrients. As most industrial wastewaters comprise a range of contaminants, Veolia's BioPlus products contain a variety of strains, so that each product can help in a variety of wastewaters. We provide products tailored to generic HPI/CPI wastewaters, as well as products tailored to food & beverage wastes, paper manufacturing and for those HPI wastes strongly contaminated with hydrocarbons.

How does bioaugmentation work?

The addition of these concentrated bacterial products works by strengthening the microbial population and providing strains that may have been washed out of the system, or killed by toxicity events. They can be used for performance enhancement, stability improvement, faster recovery, or even for starting up a system from scratch.

The advantage of using these pure, concentrated products for upset recovery, or start-up, is that they do not introduce unwanted species, such as pathogens or filamentous bacteria, then can pose operational problems. The use of bacterial seed from other operating plants can bring problems from those plants.

Water Technology article: Bioaugmentation for the reduction of lagoon & pond sludge

Many manufacturing facilities incorporate lagoons as part of their wastewater treatment process to help with BOD reduction and suspended solids removal. The lagoon often gradually fill up with solids and require periodic dredging. This article highlights two case histories where bioaugmentation provided a cost-effective approach for an oil refinery and food processing facility.

Best practices for management of wastewater treatment operations during extended refinery shutdowns

This article discusses Veolia's management plan for keeping refinery wastewater treatment plants healthy during extended shutdowns.

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