Biological Wastewater Treatment and Anaerobic Digestion: Theory, Practice and Design

Overview

How do we improve wastewater treatment efficiency? Recently, chemical engineers have become more involved in this area, because their skills in process optimisation and unit operations greatly benefit this sector.

Chemical engineers often receive no dedicated training in biological wastewater treatment at undergraduate level. This course will help you fill that knowledge gap.

Join the University of Aberdeen's online CPD course for professionals, engineers and PhD students working in the areas of biological wastewater treatment and anaerobic digestion.

Learn to optimise and design biological wastewater treatment and anaerobic digestion processes to maximise efficiency while minimising capital and operating costs.

An always-on course:

• you can join this online course any time
• you can access all materials 24/7, right from the start
• you have six months to complete the course at your own pace.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this course you will learn how to:

• explain the fundamentals of biological wastewater treatment
• describe the kinetics and stoichiometry of biological reactions
• develop and solve mass balances and design equations
• recognise the main processes used in the industry and their corresponding design equations
• design and optimise biological wastewater treatment processes.

Who will benefit

This course will help you progress in or work towards a career related to biological wastewater treatment.

It aims to fill the knowledge gaps in many areas of this sector, giving you the skills you need to stand out in this area.

Course outline

You’ll start with the fundamentals of the biological processes relevant for wastewater treatment, including:

• kinetics and stoichiometry
• chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biological oxygen demand (BOD) balance
• mass balances and parameter estimation
• aeration and settling.

You’ll look at how these fundamentals apply to the design and optimisation of:

• anaerobic digestion
• sequencing batch reactors
• attached growth processes
• the activated sludge process for carbon removal, and for carbon and nitrogen removal.

You’ll also cover:

• heat balances
• pH calculation
• removal of xenobiotics in biological wastewater treatment processes
• innovative processes.