Overview

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Academic contacts

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Offerings

MURDOCH-S2-INT-2018-ONGOING

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Requisites

Prerequisite

Other learning activities

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Learning activities

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Learning outcomes

1.

Explain the components that make modern urban and industrial waste water treatment work.

2.

Design concepts for the treatment of wastewater with respect to pollutant removal, energy costs and reaction kinetics.

3.

Differentiate and integrate bio-geochemical processes (reduction of N, S and C).

4.

Predict the effect of design options on water treatment by using computer models.

5.

Quantify, trouble-shoot and optimise biological wastewater treatment processes.

6.

Use fundamental thermodynamical, kinetic and stoichiometric principles as the foundation for the quantification of biological and chemical aqueous processes.

7.

Control the growth of microbes for the purpose of industrial and environmental processes.

8.

Evaluate which processes are technologically and economically suitable.

9.

 Communicate with water professionals on water recycling and treatment issues.

10.

Apply their knowledge of biofilm formation for a number of water related issues (e.g., diffusion controlled bioprocesses, redox mediation).

11.

Recognise the basis for and effects of microbial corrosion.

Assessments

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Additional information

Unit content:

The unit will cover the following topics (with representative concepts involved shown in parentheses): 

· Microbial growth (exponential growth, growth curve, Monod model, yield coefficient, total and maximum productivity, substrate competition)

· Oxygen transfer for aerobic processes (KLa, Henry's Law, diffusion, convection, solubility)

· Biological oxygen uptake in aerobic processes (oxygen uptake rate, oxygen limitation, degradability testing, critical oxygen concentration)

· Microbial cultivation (growth yield coefficient, maintenance coefficient, ATP yield, washout, loading rate, biomass feedback, comparison of chemostat and batch systems)

· Product formation and stoichiometry (stoichiometry and redox reactions, oxidation states, electron equivalents, fermentation, respiration, oxygen demand)

· Biogeochemistry and anaerobic respiration (bio-mineral processing, deep ocean bioreactions, microbes in extreme environments, sulphur and nitrogen in anaerobic processes)

· Nitrogen removal in wastewater treatment (sequencing batch reactors, nitrification, denitrification, simultaneous nitrification and denitrification, phosphate release and uptake, on-line and gateway sensors)

· Anaerobic digestion and bioenergetics (Gibbs free energy, interspecies hydrogen transfer,  biomethanation, operation and failure of anaerobic digesters, energy sharing between microbe groups, feedback and feedback inhibition)

· Process control and modelling (process control building blocks, on/off feedback control, PID control, control set points, oxygen as a control target).