Solving Algae Fouling for Reliable Wastewater Discharge at a Seed Oil Refinery

The Challenge

A seed oil refinery’s process wastewater feeds a roughly 30-million-gallon lagoon before discharge, and residual organic content in that lagoon was fueling heavy algal blooms, consistently pushing COD and TSS out of compliance with the site’s outfall discharge limits (250 ppm COD, 35 ppm TSS) and putting continued operations at risk. Feed COD regularly exceeded 250 ppm, TSS ranged 75-500 ppm, and chlorophyll, a proxy for algal content, stayed above 600 ppb. Conventional microfiltration and media filtration had both been tried and failed within weeks: the algae’s extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) fouled the microfiltration