AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Understanding Emissions from Wastewater Treatment Processes and Their Impact on Regional Air Quality and Health
PEDRO PIQUERAS, Akua Asa-Awuku, Mark Matsumoto, University of California, Riverside
Abstract Number: 171 Working Group: Aerosol Exposure
Abstract As water resources become scarce and population grows, the construction and use of wastewater treatment plants is increasing significantly. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are common in urban environments and their aerosol emissions have been associated with local and regional health burden. Known toxic compounds, bacteria, fungi, endotoxins and viruses have been observed in WWTP aerosols in the past, but their concentration and classification are still dubious. The airborne exposure route is also still poorly established due to the lack of information on aerosol characterization and transport.
In this study, we measure particle concentration and size distributions from two laboratory scale bioreactors; a bioreactor with an air diffuser and a bioreactor with only a mixer. These bioreactors simulate both aerobic and anaerobic biological processes in the secondary stage of water treatment. The inside of the bioreactors contains sludge from an aeration basin from a WWTP in Redlands, California. They are fed 3,000 mg/L of COD every two days by using a dilution of molasses as the influent. This COD is fully degraded after the two-day cycle.
Results suggest that aerobic processes generate more particles through bubble bursting. Increasing the aeration flow rate increases the particle number, however the size distributions of particles produced remains the same. The results will later be extrapolated to real field measurements at Orange County Sanitation District aerated basins.
To our knowledge, these are the first real-time measurement of ultrafine particles measured from WWTPs systems and it will attempt to fill some of the gaps in scientific literature so that regulatory laws can be implemented in order to establish a safe and non-polluting environment when treating wastewater.