Tiny chips let wastewater treatment plant grow by acres

The little discs look like wafers from a waffle iron. But when town officials in Hooksett, N.H., needed to increase the capacity of the waste-water treatment system, they dumped nearly 46 million of them –Biofilm M plastic chips –into waste-water holding tanks.

"The old technology would have been to just build more tanks,” said the Hooksett Sewer Department’s superintendent, Bruce Kudrick. "But that’s very expensive, and we don’t really have the land to expand.”

The town’s longtime consulting firm, Graves Engineering of Worcester, suggested using Biofilm chips, made in Germany by a North Carolina subsidiary of Veolia Water, a company with operations in 66 countries.

The technology is simple. The maze of squares on the discs adds significantly to the surface area available for growing oxygen-producing microorganisms, which are essential in the process that decomposes sewage.

By Phil Primack

Full Story: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2010/11/29/tiny_chips_let_treatment_plant_grow_by_acres/