Manufacturer of Luxury Soaps Controls Fatty Acid Foaming

Challenge

High Lauric and Stearic Fatty Acids

Solution

Qwik-Zyme L, VitaStim Surfactants

Results

An organic chemical manufacturer in North Carolina contacted us about foam being generated in their treatment system. They use a series of two lagoons, with high aeration in the first lagoon to pretreat their waste stream before sending it to the municipal wastewater treatment plant. The waste stream has high concentrations of lauric and stearic acids which contribute to influent BOD 600 ppm, and COD 200 ppm. The system was not achieving complete breakdown of these fatty acids as the waste stream moved quickly through the system. The operator began using VitaStim Surfactants to add new bacteria cultures which break-down of fatty acids. This improvement was enough to make the customer happy, but we thought that adding our Qwik-Zyme L, liquid biocatalyst product, would help break down the fatty acids even more quickly. The biocatalyst accelerated the process, a huge benefit in this waste stream with a short detention time. The combination of biocatalyst and bacteria brought the systems effluent waste stream down to BOD 8.1 ppm, and COD .4 ppm.

Municipal WWTP and Local Industry

System

Activated Sludge

Flow Rate

120,000 gallons per day

Background

The municipality upgraded their wastewater plant three years ago with fine bubble aeration. Immediately they began noticing a foot of foam on the basins and persistently higher effluent ammonia numbers. They traced the foaming issue down to a tannery in town. The tannery has an existing wastewater process of their own consisting of an equalization tank followed by aeration and a very simple DAF unit. To clean the fat, oil and grease off hides the tannery uses surfactants, substances similar to soap in their make-up. We learned the cause of the issue in the municipal plant was that surfactants were passing through the tannery system undigested, and then foaming when they hit the fine bubble diffusers at the municipal system. The tannery experimented with a number of surfactants to help stop the foaming, but to no avail.

Solution

The solution was to breakdown the surfactants at the tannery’s treatment plant. We had them increase the holding time in their EQ tank to create anoxic conditions and then they added Qwik-Zyme L and Qwik-Zyme P to speed the breakdown the grease and long chain fatty acids. The process was further enhanced by adding Foam Buster to the aeration tank. Foam Buster’s micronutrient blend boosts the ability of native bacteria to degrade fatty acids and grease. The biocatalysts kicked off the surfactant degradation process, and native bacteria with the help of Foam Buster finished the process. Immediately, the city noticed 95% less foam and better settling. As the foam went away they also realized that the surfactants had been knocking out their nitrifiers. As the surfactants were no longer hitting them as they had before, nitrification improved and their effluent ammonia dropped. Now both the municipality and tannery are happy.

Sequencing batch reactor (SBR)

Challenge

A customer in central Alabama has a SBR system that was having an ongoing issue with Microthrix Parvicella. It was causing bad foaming, poor settling, and a cloudy effluent. This plant was out of compliance and needed immediate help. Their flow rate was 100,000 GPD.

Solution

They added 10 lbs. of Foam Buster and 1 quart of Qwik-Zyme L per day for 7 days.

Results

7 days later: Grease was cut in half and settling had improved. 21 days later: The foam was gone and the plant was in compliance with the super tight limits.

Wisconsin Food Processor

System

Trickling Filter>DAF> Aeration Basin

Flow Rate

200,000 gallons per day

Challenge

Malfunctioning DAF-caused foaming in Aeration

Background

To achieve their effluent goals, this processor has to incorporate 2 pretreatment steps before the waste stream gets to their aeration basin. First a trickling filter takes the BOD from around 4000 ppm to 1000 ppm. Next a Dissolved Air Floatation (DAF) unit removes all the grease that the trickling filter didn’t remove. Trickling filters are notorious for allowing grease to pass right through them. They system generally worked pretty well, but was dependent on the DAF making up for the shortcomings of the trickling filter. However, one day a mechanical issue resulted in the DAF being taken offline, and the timeline for getting the replacement part was unknown. With only the trickling filter for pretreatment, and no other way to remove the fats, oils, and grease (FOG) they soon began foaming.

Solution

This customer started with our fatty acids analysis to determine what the concentrations of FOG were, and which fatty acids it consisted of.

Fatty Acid Testing revealed especially high amounts of Palmitic, Stearic, and Oleic acid. Also typically the highest concentration Fatty Acids in municipal influent.

Since the loss of the DAF, total fatty acids in aeration had now jumped up to 7551.5 ppm. The fastest way to reduce the foam was to accelerate the degradation of the very high FOG in the basin. The most prevalent long chain fatty acids are also typically slow to degrade molecules in an aerobic system. The operator used Qwik-Zyme L at a rate of 2 quarts per day, combined with our VitaStim bacteria blend. The biocatalysts in Qwik-Zyme L act on specific structures in the FOG, which allows bacteria in the system to quickly degrade the FOG molecule. Within 30 days the foam had disappeared, despite the DAF unit still not being brought back online.