Feature Project (Microbial) Client: | | Franklin District Council |
Location: | | Pukekohe, NZ |
The commissioning of a WWTP provided a unique opportunity to link floc structure dynamics with the changes in the microbial community during start-up and stabilization. During commissioning of the new Sequential Batch Reactor (SBR) at the Pukekohe WWTP, AWT Water alongside the University of Auckland, had the opportunity to study the microbial community development. This involved collecting samples daily initially, with the frequency dropping off over the eight week study period. At the AWT Water laboratory the following analysis where undertaken; assessment of floc structure, filament abundance, filamentous species identification, and protozoan and metazoan population sizes.
At the University of Auckland the samples where analysed using particle size distribution, genetic analysis for assessment of changes in microbial populations, and Extracellular Polymeric Substances (EPS) production.
The SBR plant operated well over the entire start-up period although the microbial biomass changed considerably, particularly in terms of the flocs structure, size and bacterial species composition. This indicated the good performance can be achieve with very different microbes making it important to monitor what is normal for your plant so that when things start to go wrong its easy to spot what has changed and take corrective action early before major problems develop.
Click here to view the paper presented at the 2010 Water New Zealand Conference for more details.