Immersed Membrane BioReactor (IMBR) for treatment of combined domestic and dairy wastewater in an isolated farm: An exploratory case study implementing the Facet Analysis (FA)

a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o In many regions dairy farms and milk processing industries, discharge large quantities of their wastes to the surroundings which pose serious environmental risks. With the purpose of treating the combined dairy and domestic wastewater from a small dairy farm in the Negev Desert of Israel, the use of a recent emerging technology of Immersed Membrane BioReactor (IMBR) was evaluated over the course of 500 test hours, under a variety of wastewater feed quality conditions. Field experiments were performed at the Kornmehl farm, an isolated dairy farm located 30 km south of BeerSheva, in the Negev Desert of Israel. The operating conditions for this experiment included constant product flow of 7 (L/h)], and the transmembrane pressure was increased smoothly during the experiment from 0.05 to 0.13 bar. Temperatures ranged between 30°C and 37°C, pH ranged between 4 and 9, TSS varied between 353 mg/L to 1000 mg/L and COD changed from 900 mg/L to 12,800 mg/L. The overall performance of a pilot-scale Ultrafiltration (UF) IMBR process for a combined domestic and dairy wastewater was analyzed based on the Facet Analysis (FA) method. Preliminary results of the FA model indicate: (i) the Trans-Membrane Pressure (TMP); the pH and the temperature do not have an effect on the performance of the permeate normalized flux and on the specific normalized flux, and; (ii) the bioreactor is characterized by high concentration of organic matters and it can be estimated that the IMBR normalized flux decline is dependent on other variables (air blower performance, backwash procedure and chemical cleaning)

Monitoring of Polluted Water Bodies by Remote Sensing

The purpose of this study is to evaluate a remote sensing method for real time monitoring of wastewater effluent. Reflectance in the range from 400 to 950 nm with a spectral resolution of 2 nm, simultaneously with turbidity, chlorophyll and total suspended matter contents were acquired in two wastewater systems: R m and Naan, Israel. The reflectance spectra of wastewater effluent were investigated in order to develop algorithms for remote estimation of wastewater quality expressed as chlorophyll-α, bacteriochlorophyll-α, non-organic and total suspended matter concentrations. Reflectance height at 720 nm and an area above the base line from 670 to 950 nm were used in algorithms for chlorophyll-α assessment. An area under the base line, through 780 to 900 nm, was found to be a measure of bacteriochlorophyll-α. Reflectance around 570 nm and reflected light in the range 400 to 950 nm were used to assess total suspended matter concentration. For the first time quantitative remote assessment of waste waters quality is reported

Economic Development of Groundwater in Arid Zones with Applications to the Negev Desert, Israel

A mixed binary integer linear program is formulated to determine the economic development of marginal groundwater sources at local demand sites in an arid region. These marginal sources are required to augment the supply from an overloaded regional source. The model accounts for variable costs of supply, fixed investment costs, capacity constraints at the regional and local levels, and water quality requirements at the local sites. A Lagrangian relaxation reduces the model to a series of simple local problems, the solution of which provides an optimal sequence for developing the marginal groundwater sources while reducing the demands on the regional source. A heuristic and an exact procedure are also proposed to solve the problem for arbitrary levels of supply from the regional source. The exact procedure uses characteristics of the optimal solution to reduce the model to a series of knapsack-type problems. The theory is applied to a small case study taken from the Negev Desert in southern Israel.economic development of marginal groundwater sources, mixed binary integer linear program, Lagrangian relaxation, knapsack problem