Bishop Solids Management Solution — Dewatering for all occasions
DATE POSTED: September 3, 2021
We’ve dewatered a lot of stuff over the years.
Everything from ordinary wastewater sludge and excess soil from construction sites, to noxious slurries containing really smelly organics, industrial process wastewater, and even low-level radioactive materials.
Over that time, we’ve learned a couple of things.
First, that our Bishop Solids Management Solution is extremely versatile. It can be used to collect, dewater and consolidate almost any type of slurry material.
The second thing is that our Solids Management Solution is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to get the job done. Our passive, gravity-based dewatering system is often compared against more complex, energy-intensive processes such as centrifuges, belt presses, and filter presses. In most cases, we can demonstrate that the Bishop Solids Management Solution can achieve similar or better dewatering performance at a lower cost and using less energy than alternatives.
The Bishop Solids Management Solution not only retains and consolidates solids, it also provides water treatment—greatly reducing TSS, nutrients and other contaminants of concern. This can be an effective pretreatment step or, depending on regulatory requirements, the filtrate can meet standards for discharge to the environment or even reuse in non-potable applications.
Start with a simple sludge test
Our process starts by obtaining a sample of the sludge and performing a dewatering test. The test reveals a lot of important information such as the solids concentration of the slurry, the polymer that will provide the best dewatering performance and how much water can potentially be removed.
We also need to know the approximate volume of sludge to be dewatered. This information, combined with the results from the dewatering test enables our team to calculate the number of Geotube® dewatering containers that will be needed, how large the dewatering cell will be, how much polymer will be needed and of course, how long the project will take.
What’s your solids management or dewatering challenge?
We have the solution.
Contact us to discuss your solids management needs and learn how simple, low-energy solutions from Bishop Water can help.
Learn more about the Bishop Solids Management Solution.
Top 5 things to consider for a lagoon upgrade
DATE POSTED: December 22, 2020
Wastewater lagoons provide simple, reliable and relatively low-cost treatment for small and medium sized communities. In Canada and the US, there are nearly 10,000 municipal lagoon systems and many more when industrial, agricultural and commercial lagoon systems are included.
But eventually a community needs to improve the treatment capacity and performance of its lagoon system to accommodate growth, meet more stringent regulatory requirements, or both. We’ve compiled a list of important considerations to help you plan a lagoon upgrade that can provide the performance and capacity your community needs at affordable capital and operating costs.
1) Post-lagoon or in-situ treatment process
Moving-bed and submerged-bed systems typically add tanks or in-ground cells to accommodate the new treatment process. Not only does this add to the plant footprint, it also requires additional equipment such as tanks, pipes, pumps and blowers, which can substantially increase capital costs. In-situ systems can be installed directly into the lagoon to enhance treatment capacity without expanding footprint or adding a large amount of supporting equipment.
2) Energy demand
Blowers can provide lots of air quickly, but the equipment is costly and has high energy demands. Some systems such as MBBR also rely on coarse bubbles from blowers to circulate the carrier media and keep it in suspension, in addition to supplying air to the microbial population. But larger bubbles are also less efficient at transferring oxygen to microbes – much of the air simply bubbles up and out of the process tank. Instead, consider a system that uses low-energy compressors and micro-bubble aeration for significantly higher oxygen transfer and lower, more efficient energy usage.
3) Ease of operation
One of the big advantages of wastewater lagoons is that they require little operator attention compared to more advanced mechanical treatment plants. In-situ systems can also share this advantage since they align well with the way wastewater lagoons are typically managed and don’t add complexity or additional processes to manage.
4) Capital and long-term operating costs
Tanks, media beds, blowers and other equipment can all add capital and operating costs to a lagoon upgrade. Alternatively, in-situ systems use the existing lagoon cell, which can reduce capital costs by as much as 50%. Energy demand for in-situ systems can also be up to 50% lower by eliminating the need to pump wastewater to sidestream process and replacing blowers with low-energy compressors.
5) Customizability
Like any wastewater system, lagoons can experience variable loading, changing flows, upset and more. Upgrade technologies should be easily adaptable to respond to short- and long-term operating conditions, including anticipated changes to population and regulatory requirements. To achieve this, consider modular systems that can be brought online as needed or easily expanded to accommodate the needs of the community or business.
BioCord Reactors check all the boxes
BioCord™ Reactors biological nutrient removal gives lagoon operators a simple and efficient way to dramatically increase capacity and performance of a wastewater lagoon or conventional activated sludge plant without expanding footprint. This low-energy, self-regulating process is ideal to help a plant achieve up to 99% ammonia reduction in difficult treatment conditions such as during cold weather or when experiencing high-strength or variable loading. The fixed-film, modular process is like a condominium for bacteria on which preferred, naturally occurring bacteria can thrive. BioCord reactors offer a flexible, modular design that can be customized to fit virtually any secondary treatment process and handle anticipated flow and loading parameters.
Learn more about BioCord Reactors for lagoon upgrades.
Contact us to discuss your wastewater treatment plant upgrade.
Partial lagoon cleanouts help balance performance and budgets
DATE POSTED: August 28, 2020
If you’re going to clean out a cell or two at your wastewater lagoon, there are circumstances when a partial cleanout might be the best, fastest way to quickly fix an urgent capacity or performance issue until the lagoon is ready for a full desludging.
Partial cleanouts, using the Bishop Solids Management Solution, can most often be completed while the lagoon remains in operation, so there’s no need to decommission the cell or disrupt the process flow. Bishop Water can quickly diagnose lagoon performance issues caused by excess sludge and determine the volume and locations of sludge that should be removed from the cell.
Once a plan is ready, the team can mobilise a dredge, its mobile polymer conditioning system and prepare a laydown area for Geotube® containers, are used to collect, dewater and consolidate the solids. Or, if the volume of sludge is small, they can be filled and removed inside 30-yard roll off boxes, making transportation and disposal fast and simple.
Partial sludge cleanouts can also become part of an ongoing lagoon maintenance program to ensure optimum performance. Rather than waiting until sludge accumulation reaches a critical level, lagoon operators or Bishop Water technicians can monitor sludge accumulation in the lagoon and when needed, proactively perform a partial cleanout to maintain an optimized level of performance.
Partial lagoon cleanouts have been used by many lagoon operators to achieve operational and economic benefits including:
- Quickly restore lost storage and treatment capacity in the lagoon;
- Correct flow issues caused by sludge accumulation that create short-circuiting of lagoon flow and reduced retention time;
- Defer the cost of a full lagoon cleanout over an extended period of time;
- Maximize the capacity and dewatering of each Geotube® container. Partially filled containers can remain onsite for continued filling at the next cleanout interval. They will experience significant volume reduction between fill intervals, which will reduce the number of containers needed as well as hauling and disposal costs.
Learn more about Bishop Solids Management Solutions for partial lagoon cleanouts.
Contact us to discuss your lagoon clean out needs.
Why does freezing improve Geotube® dewatering performance?
DATE POSTED: February 27, 2020
Geotube containers that are filled late in the year are often left onsite over the winter to experience the dewatering advantages that the freeze-thaw cycle brings. Once the thawing begins, those previously frozen Geotube® containers can give up a lot of water—in some cases up to 50% of their volume.
This dramatic reduction in volume means that the containers can be topped up with additional slurry materials once they are fully thawed. Or, if the solids are destined for disposal, the reduced volume will mean much less material to transport and lower costs for hauling and tipping fees.
Expansion helps with consolidation of solids
Dewatering benefits from the freeze-thaw cycle because water expands as it freezes. The Bishop Solids Management Solution, with Geotube® containers, can attain 15 – 18% solids within a few days of dewatering, but that means there’s still a good amount of water remaining as cold temperatures set in. The formation of ice crystals and the expansion of the water compress the solids and once the thaw occurs, more water is released and the solids are further consolidated.
The results can be quite dramatic. At a recent wastewater lagoon desludging project, our crew filled Geotube® containers to a maximum height of 7.5 feet. The containers were left on site over the winter and after thawing in the spring, the height was reduced almost by half.
Some of our clients that are equipped with a permanent Bishop Solids Management Solution take full advantage of freeze-thaw cycles in their sludge management plans.
The North Rustico Wastewater Treatment Facility in Prince Edward Island, Canada uses several large Geotube® containers setup outdoors to dewater waste sludge, with a smaller container in a greenhouse that is used during the winter months. The outdoor containers are left to freeze over the winter and can be topped up in the spring once they thaw and release more water. This enables the plant to use Geotube containers for several seasons, replace them less often, and reduce operating costs.
Read the feature article about the North Rustico WWTF in Go With the Flow magazine published by the Atlantic Canada Water and Wastewater Association.
Learn more about Geotube® containers for solids dewatering.
Contact us with your questions about the Geotube® freeze/thaw/consolidation cycle and to arrange for a dewatering test of your solids.
Proving BioCord cold-weather nitrification under highly variable conditions
DATE POSTED: December 11, 2019
What happens when a BioCord™ pilot system experiences operating conditions that are much different than what was expected? Is the data still useful? Is the pilot project considered a success?
These are some of the questions we asked ourselves after looking at the results from a BioCord pilot study performed under highly variable conditions. In the end, we learned that the data was very valuable and proved not only that BioCord can achieve nitrification at temperatures below 1°C, but it can do it under some pretty tough conditions.
The BioCord pilot project was conducted at the wastewater treatment lagoons serving the small town of St. Henry, Ohio, USA. The village was facing serious operational challenges at its four-cell lagoon system, which treats municipal wastewater and effluent from a food processing plant. Despite adding aerators and a mixing unit, the plant was struggling to maintain sufficient ammonia removal during the winter months.
With little space to expand the treatment plant, the community was also concerned about potentially complying with more stringent ammonia limits (1 mg/L) and handling increased hydraulic flows of up to 2x the plant’s rated capacity.
A 1.4 m x 1.4 m x 1.4 m BioCord Reactor was used in the St Henry Pilot Project.
A BioCord pilot system was installed to test its ability to provide a scalable, low-energy, fixed-film technology that could upgrade lagoon performance and increase treatment capacity without expanding plant footprint.
The BioCord pilot system was designed to handle influent ammonia concentrations of about 20-25 mg/L and BOD of 50 -75 mg/L, drawn from Cell 2 of the lagoon system. The pilot ran from September 2017 to May 2018.
BioCord deals with unexpected conditions
But influent concentrations of ammonia and BOD often exceeded the design specifications, especially in the colder months – between November and February. Ammonia was often above 40 and BOD climbed as high as 300 mg/L at times. Our team was concerned that the BioCord system was undersized to handle the higher influent levels.
Yet despite the higher than anticipated influent concentrations and undersized reactor, the BioCord system performed very well. Nitrification was achieved at temperatures as low as 0.5°C and BOD levels were also dramatically reduced. Based on the data and BioCord performance, the team concluded that additional BioCord reactors would have enabled the pilot system to handle the higher-than-expected loading rates and provide desired nitrification.
Learn more about simple, low-energy BioCord Reactors for cold-weather ammonia and BOD removal.
Contact us to discuss your wastewater treatment needs.
Partial lagoon cleanouts help balance performance and budgets
DATE POSTED: July 30, 2019
You might think that if you’re going to cleanout a cell or two of your wastewater lagoon, it’s best to do it all at once. But there are circumstances when a partial clean out might be the best way to quickly fix an urgent capacity or performance issue until the lagoon is ready for a full desludging.
Partial clean outs, using the Bishop Solids Management Solution, can most often be completed while the lagoon remains in operation, so there’s no need to decommission the cell or disrupt the process flow. Bishop Water can quickly diagnose lagoon performance issues caused by excess sludge and determine the volume and locations of sludge that should be removed from the cell.
Once a plan is ready, the team can mobilize a dredge, its mobile polymer conditioning system and prepare a laydown area for Geotube® containers, which are used to collect, dewater and consolidate the solids. Or, if the volume of sludge is small, they can be filled and removed inside 30-yard roll off boxes, making transportation and disposal fast and simple.
Partial sludge clean outs can also become part of an ongoing lagoon maintenance program to ensure optimum performance. Rather than waiting until sludge accumulation reaches a critical level, lagoon operators or Bishop Water technicians, can monitor sludge accumulation in the lagoon and when needed, proactively perform a partial clean out to maintain an optimized level of performance.
Partial lagoon cleanouts have been used by many lagoon operators to achieve operational and economic benefits including:
- Quickly restore lost storage and treatment capacity in the lagoon;
- Correct flow issues caused by sludge accumulation that create short-circuiting of lagoon flow and reduced retention time;
- Defer the cost of a full lagoon clean out over an extended period of time;
- Maximize the capacity and dewatering of each Geotube® container. Partially filled containers can remain onsite for continued filling at the next clean out interval. They will experience significant volume reduction between fill intervals, which will reduce the number of containers needed as well as hauling and disposal costs.
Contact us to learn more about the Bishop Solids Management Solution and to discuss your lagoon clean out needs.
A new twist to optimize biofilm treatment for lagoon augmentation
DATE POSTED: July 2, 2019
As published in Western Canada Water
Biofilm, or fixed-film processes, are not new to wastewater treatment—the approach has been used successfully for decades — and long before activated sludge was introduced.
Right: Layers of microorganisms developed on the BioCord Reactor media.
However, not all biofilm technologies are the same and many experience challenges in achieving low operating costs and optimizing system performance in difficult conditions such as sudden increases in loading, cold water conditions and year-round removal of nitrogen.
Recent developments in fixed film media, system design and aeration have produced a low-cost, low-energy, low-maintenance process that is installed directly into a treatment lagoon to increase capacity and performance without expanding plant footprint.
Developed by Bishop Water Technologies, the BioCord™ Reactor system is a fixed-film biological treatment process that is like a condominium for bacteria. Each reactor supports densely arranged, twisted loops of polymer fibres that provide a massive surface area on which preferred, naturally occurring bacteria can thrive.
Read the full article to learn how an optimized BioCord system can help operators overcome many operational challenges.
BioCord™ pilot system proves mettle for cold-weather nitrification
DATE POSTED: March 26, 2019
A BioCord pilot system has successfully demonstrated its ability to easily and affordably achieve high ammonia removal for an industrial wastewater lagoon during the cold winter months. Winter and early spring typically pose significant challenges for treatment lagoons to remove ammonia and meet regulatory limits in treated effluent.
This site, a petrochemical manufacturing plant in western Canada, operates a three-lagoon treatment plant, designed to reduce high ammonia and organic loads in the wastewater.
For the pilot project, a containerized, plug-and-play BioCord system was set up to treat raw wastewater from the second pond in the lagoon system—the point where nitrogen is highest.
After 14 weeks of operation, the BioCord system demonstrated significantly better performance than the lagoon for reducing ammonia concentrations and other key treatment parameters such as BOD, cBOD, TSS and COD. Even when the temperature of the wastewater fell as low as 2.8C, BioCord was able to achieve 97% reduction of ammonia.
On average, the BioCord Reactor pilot system was able to reduce ammonia concentration in treated effluent to about 13 mg/L, vs. influent concentration of about 38 mg/L. By comparison, treatment pond 2 was only able to achieve an average of 2% ammonia reduction during cold conditions, reducing the concentration from an average of 38 mg/L to 37 mg/L, well above the site’s regulated discharge limit of 30 mg/L.
Data from the study can also be used to design a full-scale, modular BioCord system for the site. Unlike alternative approaches that require additional tanks and energy-intensive blowers, a BioCord system is installed directly into the treatment lagoon, helping to minimize capital costs and eliminating the need to expand plant footprint. This design, along with low-energy compressors, rather than costly blowers enables a BioCord system to consume about 50% less energy than an MBBR system designed to achieve the same level of nutrient removal. The compressors, combined with an integrated aeration diffuser, provide an optimized level of oxygen and mixing to develop a robust, highly efficient biofilm.
Learn more about BioCord Reactors for cold-weather ammonia removal in treatment lagoons.
Contact us to discuss a BioCord Pilot System for your treatment plant.
In western Canada, contact DWG Process Supply: 
Bay 110, 44 Riel Drive
Riel Business Park
St.Albert, AB, T8N-3Z8
Phone: 780-460-8433
don.burgess@dwg-process-supply.com
Try before you buy — a simple, low-cost BioCord upgrade for your lagoon
DATE POSTED: February 27, 2019
Now’s the time to install a BioCord pilot system and test the ability of this simple, easy-to-operate biological process to dramatically improve year-round ammonia removal in your wastewater lagoons.
Modular BioCord Reactors are like condominiums for bacteria, incorporating a customizable design that rises up through the water column to suit virtually any treatment conditions and plant design. The reactor frame supports densely arranged loops of polymer fibres that provide a massive surface area on which preferred, naturally occurring bacteria can thrive.
Unlike other attached growth systems, BioCord can be installed directly into the treatment lagoon and does not require costly tanks or blowers to operate. Instead, the system uses energy-efficient compressors that consume only a fraction of the power required by processes such as MBBR.
BioCord requires little operator attention and quickly establishes a large, healthy colony of desirable microbes that effectively remove ammonia and other wastewater constituents such as BOD, COD, TSS and phosphorus.
Test BioCord performance at your lagoon
A BioCord pilot system can be easily installed at any wastewater lagoon to test system performance under site-specific conditions. Following a site assessment, a team from Bishop Water Technologies can install a BioCord pilot system that is capable of treating about 32 m³ (8,400 gallons) of wastewater per day to evaluate its effectiveness at producing treated effluent that will meet the regulated ammonia limit for the site.
A compact BioCord pilot system can be brought to site fully assembled in a standard shipping container or installed in a building or on a pad. The pilot system is fully equipped with all pipes and electrical connections to be quickly connected to an electrical supply and a feed and discharge line for wastewater and treated effluent.
Once connected, microbial growth will begin almost immediately and the system typically achieves results within two to four weeks of commissioning. The Bishop Water team will provide comprehensive installation and commissioning services and will conduct regular sampling, monitoring and maintenance of the system. Within two to four months, the system can provide sufficient operational data to demonstrate its capabilities for cold-weather biological ammonia reduction.
Click here to learn how Bishop Water’s BioCord Reactor system is helping improve ammonia removal at a site in Dundalk, Ontario.
Click here to learn more about Bishop Water’s pilot project in Ohio.
Contact us to arrange a BioCord pilot test for your wastewater lagoon.