Severn Trent imports Brazilian bacteria to treat wastewater

Severn Trent has imported a type of biomass from Brazil to reduce levels of ammonia in wastewater in Birmingham.

Importing the anammox from a significantly warmer climate has the advantage of multiplying quicker and working more efficiently than biomass from temperate regions.

Anammox, an abbreviation for anaerobic ammonium oxidation, is used to remove nitrogen rich effluents

The pea-sized biomass requires controlled temperature and pH levels to carry out the process that has already resulted in an ammonia removal rate of over 80 per cent, which has contributed to a 15 per cent reduction in downstream aeration power usage.

The Brazilian biomass has an ammonia removal rate of more than 80 per cent and Severn Trent is now optimising the anaerobic ammonium oxidation plant to increase efficiency further.

As the bugs become better established the company is exploring opportunities to send the bugs from its site at Minworth to other treatment sites and support water companies that are looking to do something similar.

The Brazilian biomass reacts anaerobically to convert ammonia into nitrogen using significantly less air to complete the conversion compared to the conventional approach.

Elliot Hobbs, project manager at Severn Trent said: “Importing biomass from Brazil has enabled us to increase the capacity of our anammox plant at Minworth. This approach has reduced our operational costs and carbon footprint of our end-to-end ammonia treatment process, which happens to be one of the most costly and energy hungry practises.”

Elliot said: “Now that our anammox process seeding is complete, we are focusing on optimising the plant on a daily basis, by data analysis and fine-tuning to maximise the efficiency potential of the plant. As Minworth is a significant scale, small improvements at the anammox can have significant operational cost savings further downstream.”