Category: Wastewater Lagoon Blog

Odor

July 10, 2018 4 min read

Smelly Lagoon? Diagnosing and Correcting Lagoon Odors

Smelly lagoons have created the perception that wastewater lagoons don’t work and should be replaced with mechanical plants. Triplepoint HQ is six miles as the crow flies from the Stickney (aka “Stinkney”) Water Reclamation District, which serves the Chicago area and is the world’s largest wastewater treatment plant. Our coworkers who live a little closer […]

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Ammonia

June 22, 2018 5 min read

Land Application of Lagoon Effluent: Pros and Cons

Land application is the most common disposal method for treated wastewater in the U.S., and is the preferred method in many states. Land applying effluent can reduce demand for fresh water, provide nutrients to soil, and keep potential contaminants out of waterways. For lagoons, it may also be a way to avoid having to meet […]

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Industrial Wastewater

May 23, 2018 4 min read

Frac Ponds: Treating Hydraulic Fracturing Wastewater for Reuse

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of injecting pressurized water, chemicals, and sand into the ground to extract shale oil and natural gas. While fracking has transformed energy production in the U.S., it requires a lot of water and thus creates a lot of wastewater, which must be treated and disposed of safely. In […]

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Case Studies

April 25, 2018 4 min read

Replacing Coarse Bubble Aeration: A Video Lagoon Case Study

Coarse bubble aeration for lagoons has fallen out of favor, mainly because of its inefficiency compared to fine bubble aeration. While coarse bubble aeration provides excellent mixing performance, it doesn’t transfer oxygen as well as fine bubble does, requiring higher energy expenditures. This video case study shows how replacing coarse bubble aeration with Triplepoint’s aeration […]

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February 14, 2018 4 min read

Pandemic Flu: What It Means for Wastewater Lagoons

The CDC is calling this year’s flu season the worst since 2009, with the double-whammy of an especially deadly strain and a poor match by this year’s flu vaccine. Although the current influenza outbreak is a fraction as severe as the Spanish Flu outbreak of one hundred years ago, and modern antivirals and antibiotics should […]

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Aeration

January 31, 2018 7 min read

Aerated Lagoon Optimization to Reduce Energy Consumption

Energy costs for aeration represent the largest expense for a wastewater lagoon facility, so any increase in efficiency directly improves the bottom line. Since aeration systems are designed to be efficient at the lagoon’s full design capacity, they can be inefficient and wasteful at actual flow and BOD levels. In this article, we’ll outline why […]

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Aeration

January 16, 2018 5 min read

Lagoon Surface Aerator: “A self-destructing piece of equipment”

The winter of 2017–18 is already one for the books, with record cold temperatures in the Midwest and eastern U.S., and snow as far south as Florida. So far, most of the western U.S. has enjoyed relatively mild conditions, but there’s still a couple of months of winter left to go. In a previous blog, […]

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Nitrogen

November 20, 2017 6 min read

Lagoon Nitrogen and Lagoon Ammonia…What’s the Difference?

Whether your facility has a lagoon nitrogen (TN, TKN, or TIN) or ammonia (NH3) effluent limit depends on your local environmental regulatory body, your discharge parameters, and if the watershed you discharge to is impaired. So far, most lagoon permits with an ammonia or nitrogen limit restrict only unionized ammonia (NH3), although some (and going […]

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Case Studies Ammonia

September 5, 2017 6 min read

NitrOx Lagoon Nitrification Reactor Approved in Iowa

Due to the success of the pilot, the Iowa DNR has approved a full installation of Triplepoint’s NitrOx® Process for lagoon nitrification in De Soto. Like many Iowa municipalities, the City of De Soto required an upgrade to their lagoon system to meet more stringent ammonia effluent requirements. In this article, we’ll review the conditions […]

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Aeration

August 14, 2017 4 min read

LDIB-TV: Biological Lagoon Additives with Aquafix

To paraphrase an old saying, some companies that sell hammers try to turn every problem into a nail. We’re not that kind of company. We manufacture lagoon aeration, among other things, and while we know that sufficient aeration and mixing in a lagoon can improve treatment and prevent problems like odor and sludge buildup, we […]

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July 26, 2017 4 min read

How meth lab discharge affects a wastewater lagoon

Pretty much everything that happens in town eventually makes its way into the wastewater system. So what happens to your lagoon if there’s a methamphetamine lab? An operator asked us whether meth lab discharge would upset his lagoon. Since meth labs are sadly not rare in rural areas, it seemed like a good topic to […]

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Aeration

June 22, 2017 5 min read

Why are there red streaks in my lagoon? About lagoon Daphnia

We love hearing from operators—their questions give us insight into what may be going on in other lagoon systems. An operator asked if we could identify some red bugs he saw floating on the edge of his lagoon. At first we thought midge fly larvae, which are little red worms that hatch into swarming clouds […]

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