The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Measurement of the removal of selected VOCs from a municipal treatment plant
Author:	Yu, Hong
View Online:	njit-etd1991-067 ([v], 81 pages ~ 1.9 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Chemical Engineering, Chemistry and Environmental Science
Degree:	Master of Science
Program:	Environmental Science
Document Type:	Thesis
Advisory Committee:	Kebbekus, Barbara B. (Committee chair) Lewandowski, Gordon (Committee member) Trattner, Richard B. (Committee member)
Date:	1991-12
Keywords:	Sewage -- Organic compound removal Sewage disposal plants Gas chromatography
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	Industrial wastewater contains a variety of volatile chemical constituents. The large majority of the volatiles are organics. Many of these volatile organic compounds (VOCs) end up in the effluent to wastewater treatment plants. It is necessary to estimate the emission of the VOCs from sewerage plants in order to study the fate of these volatile organic compounds. This study focuses on the estimation and comparison of the emission of 28 volatile organic compounds from the water and air in four operation units of Linden Roselle Sewerage Authority (LRSA) wastewater treatment plant. The removal rates of these target compounds have been calculated via mass balance by determining the difference between their concentration in water at each stage and the previous stage. Although the effect of specific removal mechanisms was not studied, thermodynamic calculations were made to check the results of air and water sampling. The total calculated removal rate of all 28 target compounds was 3251 kg/day. Of this total, it was assumed that 70% of the nonpolar compounds and 10% of the polar compounds were emitted to the air.