Author(s)

V. Racys & I. Valunas

Abstract

Rising environmental standards for treated wastewater necessitate the improvement of current wastewater treatment methods or the need to look for new ones. Often this task is rather difficult because new or modified methods have to be investigated thoroughly and the main parameters for process modelling and effectiveness estimation have to be set. For instance, biomass concentration in the biosorption method is an important technological parameter although there is no accurate technique for its estimation. A thermal dissociation technique to determine biomass concentration was developed as an alternative to the standard volatile suspended solids (VSS) method. Another important technological parameter in adsorption or biosorption processes is the sorption capacity of the sorbent. A simple technique was developed for the estimation of this parameter. The sorption capacity of the sorbent can be estimated using red formazane – a large-sized molecule compound–spirit solution. The results obtained show that this technique was quicker, simpler and more accurate than the standard procedure. Keywords: biosorption, stable organic compounds, biomass, sorption capacity, technological control. 1 Introduction One of the main technological parameters for the biological waste water treatment process control is the biomass amount variation during process time span. Biomass concentration is important for the technological calculations of the system, estimation of the oxidation potential and for the evaluation of biomass growth in accordance to decomposed pollutants, etc. Media of different types used in complex biological waste water treatment processes films over

Keywords

biosorption, stable organic compounds, biomass, sorption capacity, technological control.