BAAM Project, was first applied 27th of March 2014, with the main goal to develop a new micropollutants removal process, by means of “bioactivation” of powder activated carbon (PAC). “Bioactivation” should be done by immobilization the selected nitrifying microorganisms onto activated carbon in order to produce “Active Bio-particles”, which can parallel carry out biodegradation and adsorption of micropollutants. “Bioactivated” PAC, combined with PAC-FIL filtration system (from BSH Umweltservice AG), should reduce activated carbon dosing quantity and its saturation, plus facilitate the activated carbon removal from the water.
The aim of BAAM project phase 03 (September– November 2017) was to evaluate the efficiency of the combined process i.e. powdered activated carbon and granular biomass in continuous process using hydrocyclone, while reducing the activated carbon 30-50%. Additionally, the pilot plant ran under the minimum hydraulic retention time of 1 hour, which was selected as the main operating parameter for the full-scale operation. The results obtained showed that the activated carbon from 10 mg/L, can be reduced to ca. 7.4 mg/L, which is 30% of activated carbon reduction. Operational costs per m3 based on the 5 millions of m3/year using the 4 module PAC-FIL filtration units are estimated as total: 4.8 cts/m3 with activated carbon only. Reduction in activated carbon for 30% with BAAM, might influence the PAC costs from 2 cts/m3 to 1.4 cts/m3, however in order to maintain stable filtration the addition of filtration material or higher hydraulic retention time has to be selected, which will affect the total operational costs to be below 6 cts/m3.