Dairy wastewater treatment problems

[twg216]

I am treating dairy effluent from a cheese and whey plant. During the last week our SVI dropped from 120 to 84, our % volatile MLSS dropped to 64%, our SRT remained constant at 35 days.

Our problems are the clarifier is very turbid and it looks like we have straggler floc (not pin floc). We have very abundant rotifers, abundant free swimmers, and no ciliates. We also don't have a filamentous problem.

The numbers look like we have an old sludge, but the ASB and clarifier look like a young sludge.

Has anyone ever seen something like this? Any ideas to get the ciliates back in form and get some settling?

We are wasteing around 50,000 gpd, total flow is 1.25 MGD, MLSS is 6200 mg/L RAS is 8400 mg/L.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,

twg

 

[bimr]

Your system was probably upset by a change in loading or non biodegragable materials caused by some change in the dairy. You do not have enough information to understand what happened.

You should setup equipment so that you can precisely monitor the influent to your plant. Without the influent data, you will always be guessing.

If this scenario happens frequently, you should investigate some type of flow equalization.