Experiences on dual media filtration of WWTP effluent

This research is legislation driven by the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Dutch Fourth Memorandum on Water Management. The objective of this research is to achieve the removal of total nitrogen and total phosphorus by Dual Media Filtration. The target value during this research for total nitrogen is 2.2 mg/L and for total phosphorus 0.15 mg/L. The results show that for NOx-N concentrations in the WWTP effluent up to 10 mg/L, a stable operation of the process can be reached with removal rates of 80% to 90%. The maximum nitrogen removal rate was 3.5 kg N/(m³.d). Above 10 mg/L a risk of filter bed clogging occurred. When the orthophosphorus concentration in the WWTP effluent exceeds the maximum of 0.3 mg/L, the total phosphorus concentration in the filtrate water will exceed the target value of 0.15 mg P-total/L. Temperature has a large impact in the phosphorus removal; the optimum temperature range is within 13°C–18°C. In conclusion, Dual Media Filtration is capable of producing reusable water with total phosphorus concentrations of <0.15 mg/L, under the condition that the wastewater treatment plant produces WWTP effluent with steady concentrations for orthophosphorus (<0.3 mg PO₄-P/L). To reach total nitrogen concentrations in the filtrate water of <2.2 mg/L a NO_x-N removal efficiency of nearly 100% is required.