Anish, I would strongly ...

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Anish,

I would strongly encourage you to seek out an experienced engineering consultant who has worked in India or other similar environments in addition to having extensive experience upgrading wastewater treatment facilities. I would strongly encourage you to NOT hire a manufacturer of engineering technology without doing a broad survey of possible technologies by an unbiased engineer.  Your engineer will need to review the status of the existing facilities, identify capacity needs and then compare alternative strategies for upgrade. Working with a single manufacturer from the start may seem like the most efficient way to proceed, but it will almost certainly lead you only to that manufacturer's technology. That may not be the most sustainable result for your facilities. Remember the experience of the Ganga Action Project where one country's technologies were applied because that country had provided the funds for the upgrade. The result was inappropriate technology which did not solve the massive problem of Ganga pollution. It is important that your evaluation be unbiased by commercial interest and be done by an engineer with truly wide experience in the industry and with facilities like yours.

Best wishes in your project,

Randal

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Anish, I am going to seem to go against my advice here. After looking at your flow sheet, the one process that I would be looking at for upgrade of your facilities would be a granular activated sludge process. This was developed by Mark Van Loosdrecht at Delft. (http://www.tudelft.nl/en/current/latest-news/article/detail/mark-van-loosdrecht-wint-lee-kuan-yew-water-prize-2012/). But you should also be looking at more conventional processes, like activated sludge or improved separation technology. Do this with the help of an experienced engineer who is familiar with recent world-wide trends. Mark would be a good person to contact to get started. Best regards, Randal Samstag

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Anish, I didn't notice the image files attached to your post when I first replied. Your files indicate that you have "claritube" settlers for sludge separation from a fixed film system of some kind. This could well be one of the sources of your problem. These have been very aggressively designed in the past by manufacturers of these devices. I have designed lamella separators for a client in the distant past, based on manufacturer's recommendations. I wish that I hadn't. Subsequent work that my colleagues and I have done using computational fluid dynamics analysis indicates that these types of devices can fail at rates significantly lower than the aggressive rates often mentioned by manufacturers and textbooks. This makes me even more concerned that you not put your faith in one manufacturer, but in an engineering advisor with wide experience and knowledge. I see dozens of comments by manufacturers here. It is fine to be aware of these, but I strongly advise that you not follow their advice prior to doing an unbiased study by an experienced and knowledgeable engineer. The EPA document posted above is a good place to start. EPA hasn't done any really significant research in wastewater treatment since 1980. You really need to seek out the advice of an experienced engineer. Best wishes, Randal Samstag

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