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By- Jas Engineering has been manufacturing equipment since 1979.

The two 55kW aerators were temporarily installed as part of GVW’s response to an event in July to September last year, where a number of factors, including unusually cold temperatures, caused an upset in the biological wastewater treatment process at Shepparton’s Wastewater Management Facility.

It’s one of several actions underway to ensure any similar conditions are identified proactively, before they trigger issues which cause odour impacts for Shepparton residents.

Following the odour issue, GVW commissioned an independent expert review, which highlighted several recommendations for both immediate action and longer-term planning.

As well as the aerators, GVW is building a digital dashboard with alerts issued when the treatment performance hits identified levels, and will continue increased wastewater quality monitoring and analysis in key treatment lagoons.

The review also identified that increasing the temperature in the primary treatment lagoon could also help improve treatment performance in colder months and reduce the need for additional chemical dosing in winter. Such a large-scale project will be considered as part of future development and facility master planning.

The Shepparton facility works via a large-scale lagoon process, beginning in a primary treatment lagoon, where microscopic ‘bugs’ break down wastewater in a zero-oxygen environment, before the wastewater moves to aerated lagoons for further breakdown.

A combination of factors – including cold weather, changes in wastewater concentration, and a decrease in alkalinity, a key performance measure - led to the primary lagoon underperforming. This placed additional pressure on the aerated lagoons, which caused the release of odour during the aerated treatment process.

GVW acknowledges the significant impact the odour issue had on many residents, particularly in northern Shepparton areas.

We’re sorry for this – we’re working to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

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Surface Aeration

Surface aeration is a process which promotes oxygenation of large fluid volumes. Oxygenation is most often necessary because impurities and bacteria present within the fluid (e.g. polluted water or sewage) demand and consume large quantities of oxygen. Consequently, there arises a need to re-establish the dissolved oxygen content of the liquid either in order to sustain fish and plant life in a river or lake, or to accelerate treatment within a sewage processing system.

Surface aerators have, over the years, been the subject of intensive development, their chief application having been in the activated sludge process of sewage treatment.
Water is a major issue in a dry and remote country like Australia. We envision a future where access to clean water and reliable sanitation is a fixture in every day life for all urban and remote communities.

The prime factor affecting their design is naturally the efficiency of the transfer of oxygen to water. Surface aerators attempt to develop the largest possible interfacial area between air and liquid so that oxygen can diffuse from the air into the liquid. In achieving this, it is necessary to prevent local build up of oxygen concentrations by promoting good mixing with the water.

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Wednesday 21 September

We’ve got great news from our Incident Management Team – the Shepparton Wastewater Management Facility has returned to normal winter operating levels, and odour is no longer being released from the aerated lagoons.

With that, its been recommended to close out the IMT this week and we’ll be working on some wider communications materials to inform the community about our progress and success in returning the plant to normal.

We’re seeing a continuing downward trend in the levels of organic load leaving the High Rate Anerobic Lagoon, which is the primary treatment lagoon at the facility. It’s returning to levels we normally see in winter, close to 100mg/L, which we’re really happy with, and shows the lagoon’s treatment performance has stabilised and is working well. We’re also seeing temperatures begin to increase in the lagoon, and continuing warmer weather will create more optimal treatment conditions.

You can see the trends in the 14-day average graph below. Under optimal treatment processes, the gap between the orange and blue lines should be as large as possible.

We’ve also seen more key areas in our key performance indicators turn green over the past two weeks. There are still a few yellow ones, but we’re confident they’re very close to turning green in the near future as well.

These indicators show key data we’re looking at during wastewater sampling in the main treatment lagoons, including pH levels, alkalinity levels, VFAs (volatile fatty acids), the VFA to alkalinity ratio, as well as dissolved oxygen and organic loading – all are important in ensuring the wastewater treatment process works as best it can.