Fail Safe Flushing BioReactor for Selenium Water Treatment

• Main Authors: Pickett Timothy Michael, Peterson James John
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 09.02.2017
• Subjects: CHEMISTRY; CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION TECHNOLOGIES RELATED TO WASTEWATERTREATMENT OR WASTE MANAGEMENT; GENERAL TAGGING OF CROSS-SECTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES SPANNING OVER SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THE IPC; GENERAL TAGGING OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS; METALLURGY; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PHYSICAL OR CHEMICAL PROCESSES OR APPARATUS IN GENERAL; SEPARATION; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS; TECHNOLOGIES OR APPLICATIONS FOR MITIGATION OR ADAPTATION AGAINSTCLIMATE CHANGE; TRANSPORTING; TREATMENT OF WATER, WASTE WATER, SEWAGE, OR SLUDGE

A biological reactor system treats concentrated contaminated water with a combination of upflow and downflow bioreactors that are downstream from a reverse osmosis or other concentrator. The system may have a fail safe configuration where flush water may be introduced to the reactors in the event of a power failure or when taking the reactors offline. Many reverse osmosis systems introduce antiscalant treatments upstream so that the reverse osmosis filters do not scale. However, such treatments result in superconcentrated conditions of the antiscalants in the contaminated water processed by the bioreactors. A flushing system may deconcentrate the bioreactors to prevent the antiscalants from precipitating and fouling the bioreactors.