Mr. Chaabouni,  You have ...

Mr. Chaabouni, 

You have measured a high effluent suspended solids of 120mg/L, but have you also measured the effluent BOD5 or COD? Often TSS and BOD are related, but not always, and the TSS to BOD ratio provide more information. 

I have a few ideas about your system and what may be happening. If you would like to discuss further, please contact me at ARice@aqua-aerobic.com

It is very possible your plant is overloaded, and requires more aeration in order to meet treatment, since you have expanded the flow rate 1500m3/day to 2500m3/day. If you have influent loading criteria (eg: BOD, TKN, etc), you can estimate if you have enough oxygen from your existing aerators.

I am separating this into three different topics: poor effluent quality, poor settling in your clarifier, and a white color.

Regarding the Poor Settling

1. My first thought is that you do not have enough aeration in your basin for biological treatment. It is well understood that having a low dissolved oxygen level will lead to a biomass that is not able to flocculate effectively in lagoon systems ("High Performance Aerated Lagoon Systems" by Linvil Rich, pp. 204). The solution to this is to add additional aeration equipment.

2. My second thought is perhaps you are short circuiting your basin. Although your theoretical detention time is 2.3 days, some of the water may be short circuiting and reaching your effluent in less time. A young sludge below 2 days does not flocculate well and would lead to high suspended solids. The solution to this would also be to add additional aeration equipment.

3. You may be releasing dissolved gasses or denitrifying in your clarifier, which will float solids to the top similar to a dissolved air floatation system. This too may be an issue with aeration. 

All three of these issues could occur directly from your increase in flow rate. There's other possible issues (eg: the placement of your aerators is shearing flocc by the effluent), but you would expect something like to have always happened rather than only happening recently.

Regarding the poor effluent quality

1. The high effluent suspended solids is clearly related to poor settling in your clarifier and facultative lagoon. 

2. You may also be getting poor biological treatment in your lagoons, depending on your influent loading criteria.

To achieve good treatment in an aerated lagoon, you usually want 5+ days of detention time. You have less than half of that. In order to get good treatment, you almost certainly need more aeration and mixing power to (1) transfer additional oxygen and (2) improve mixing, which will improve the kinetic removal rate of the biomass in your lagoon. 

Regarding the white color - 
In my experience, I have only seen three things that have caused a white effluent:

     i. You may have insufficient aeration that is leading to anaerobic decay on the bottom of your basin, and dissolved or undissolved gasses may be coloring the wastewater. 

    ii. Calcium carbonate or calcium phosphate could be  precipitating out of solution. You can measure your water pH, alkalinity, and Ca content in order to shed light on this. 

    iii. Certain industrial wastewaters - especially sugar beets. This is UNLIKELY in your case because it is a municipal system.

I have also heard stories of cilates creating a milk-like effluent, but I have not seen that personally. 

At any rate, please don't hesitate to email me at ARice@aqua-aerobic.com if you would like to discuss your application further. My expertise is in the design of aerated lagoon and facultative lagoon systems, and wastewater aeration systems, and I can help you predict how much additional aeration equipment you will need, and what the most effective aeration equipment will be for your basin.