Monitoring of rain events with a submersible UV/VIS spectrophotometer

• Published in: Water science and technology Vol. 57; no. 10; pp. 1587 - 1593
• Main Authors: Maribas, A, Laurent, N, Battaglia, P, Da Silva, M. do C. L, Pons, M.N, Loison, B
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England IWA Publishing 01-01-2008
• Subjects: Activated sludge; Calibration; Chemical and Process Engineering; Chemical oxygen demand; Composition; Engineering Sciences; equipment design; equipment performance; meteorological instruments; Pretreatment; Rain; Sewage - analysis; Sludge; Sludge treatment; Spectrophotometers; Spectrophotometry; Spectrophotometry, Ultraviolet; streams; Submersibles; Suspended particulate matter; Total suspended solids; Ultraviolet radiation; ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy; Waste Disposal, Fluid - instrumentation; Waste Disposal, Fluid - methods; Wastewater; Wastewater treatment; Wastewater treatment plants; Water Pollutants, Chemical - analysis; Water Purification - instrumentation; Water Purification - methods; Water treatment plants; France; noise; rain event; calibration; on-line monitoring; UV/VIS spectroscopy
• ISSN: 0273-1223; 1996-9732
• DOI: 10.2166/wst.2008.144

A submersible UV/VIS spectrophotometer has been implemented on the pre-treatment unit of a large-scale wastewater treatment plant (350,000 person-equivalent) to monitor the rapid changes in total Suspended Solids and total Chemical Oxygen Demand occurring during rain events as well as injections of reject water from the sludge treatment train or wasted activated sludge. Calibration has been proven to be difficult for fast composition-varying streams but the device is able to monitor qualitatively sudden quality changes, in spite of the noise affecting the signal.