Project Head : Prof Hu Kailin
Project Team Members:
Deng Liu
Wang Lifeng
Chen Yusong
Dang Yan
Han Bing
Wang Hao
Project Advisor: Goh Kwang Beng
Project Period
21 Nov 2004 to 22 April 2005

Contents

Appendix 1

1 INTRODUCTION
“More than US$ 2 billion have been spent from 1993 to 2000 to clean up the Dianchi Lake in China’s scenic Yunnan province. But the investments have produced little if any payoff because they have not addressed the root sources of pollution such as agricultural runoff. The central and provincial governments are now looking for innovative ways to address the problem. “Quoted from an online April 2000 report by the U.S. Embassy Beijing”

According to a 1998 report by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), 185 million cubic meters of liquid waste were dumped into the Dianchi Lake in 1995, of which roughly 50 million cubic meters were industrial wastewater and 135 million cubic meters were domestic sewage. Pollution levels in the upper Dianchi Lake still regularly exceed the worst level (Five) on China’s five-level water quality scale. Level-Five is defined as being suitable for agricultural use but not appropriate for swimming or for fishing. Water quality is somewhat better in the southern part of the Lake, usually measured at level-three (acceptable for swimming and fishing) or level-four (suitable for industrial and non-swimming recreational use) standards. The current target is to improve water quality throughout the lake to a minimum level-four standard by 2010.

The clean-up measures to date have failed to stem the pollution because they have focused almost exclusively on point sources around the lake’s periphery. They have not addressed agricultural runoff or pollution of the Lake’s tributaries. According to a recent press report, 80 percent of domestic sewage entering the 16 rivers that flow into the Dianchi Lake remain untreated. Meanwhile, heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides on farm fields lying east of the Lake leads to extremely high runoff of nitrates and phosphates. According to the 1998 SEPA report, 1,021 metric tons of phosphorous and 8,981 tons of nitrogen entered the Lake in 1995. The Dianchi Lake Management committee is fully aware that the main cause of water pollution is water flowing into Dianchi from its 16 tributaries.

BluePlanet LLC of the United States presented a program for biological remediation of Dianchi Lake using BluePlanet’s unique bacteriological based product- AquaClean ACF-32 -in March 2004. The small, but badly polluted river was offered to Oakwell Engineering as a trial project using AquaClean ACF-32. The Xiba River flows into the most polluted Northern part of Dianchi Lake, and was deemed to be good, but challenging test of open water bioremediation. Kunming University of Science & Technology was engaged as an independent research party to conduct the trial, and working as the local administrator of the project.

A preliminary laboratory test on the effectiveness of AquaClean in treating the polluted water and sludge in Xiba River was conducted at the University in May 2004 with satisfactory results. However, the actual trial project was postponed to 21 November 2004 to avoid the rainy season in July and August. As such, the project was carried out from 21 Nov 2004 to 22 April 2005.

2 OBJECTIVE OF THE XIBA RIVER TRIAL
AquaClean was proposed as a bioremediation product for the Dianchi Lake rehabilitation in March 2004. The Dianchi Management Committee offered Xiba River to Oakwell Engineering Limited to conduct a trial testing the effectiveness of AquaClean in treating polluted water in Dianchi Lake. The river is a small, slow flowing tributary with extremely polluted water emanating a bad odor. The trial project was conducted to determine the effectiveness of AquaClean in odor elimination, water quality improvement and river rehabilitation able to reinstate higher forms of living organisms in the river.

3 WHAT IS AQUACLEAN ACF-32?
AquaClean ACF-32 is a highly active liquid bacteriological consortium designed specifically for use in polluted lagoons, lakes, rivers, industrial and municipal wastewater systems. AquaClean ACF-32 contains a blend of 30 selected microorganisms with a specification of 387/450 million microorganisms/ml. The product, though Bioaugmentation, accelerates the biological oxidation of slow to degrade organic matter utilizing a broad spectrum of aerobic, anaerobic, facultative, chemo- and photo-synthetic bacteria.

AquaClean ACF-32 is very effective in enhancing the biological oxidation of the slow to degrade organic compounds various types of wastewater systems, as well as open water ponds, lakes, lagoons, and rivers. Treatment results have significantly improved overall system performance and environmental health and stability.

AquaClean ACF-32 increases overall microbial oxidation rates, thereby significantly increasing organic degradation performance. This unique microbial consortium provides reductions in final effluent BOD, COD, TSS, turbidity and improves effluent discharge into the rivers, lakes or sea, while reducing waste sludge volume that has been built up in the river bed over time.

The Xiba River has very high nitrogen and phosphorus content that supports eutrophication, which in turn causes serious algae problems in the Lake. Bioremediation by AquaClean ACF-32 is one of the most cost effective means in reducing eutrophication and improving water quality in the river.

4 ABOUT XIBA RIVER
The Xiba River is 4km long, with a width range from 4 to 9m, and a depth ranging from 0.5 to 1.0m. The average flow rate is 0.3 m3/s (26,000 m3 per day). The water is badly polluted and has a grayish color most of the time. It emanates bad odors, particularly during the dry months from April to August, that can be detected as far as 20m from the river bank.

The pollutants are mostly from illegal dumping of direct domestic sewer discharge, agriculture and animal farm waste water, slaughter house waste water as well as small industrial waste including waste from cement plants. River flow can be extremely high during illegal discharge, occasionally completely upsetting trial results. The trial was conducted in the last 1.5km before the river mouth at Dianchi Lake.

5. PROCEDURE OF THE XIBA RIVER TRIAL.
The trial was conducted on the last segment of Xiba River on a stretch ranging 1,460m to 300m from Dianchi Lake. The segment from 750m to 1,260m was installed with our uniquely designed biomedia to increase the bacteria resident count. Fig 3 shows the dosing and water sampling locations. AquaClean dosing is applied daily based on water flow volume at approximately 1 ppm per day. AquaClean was poured directly into the designated dosing location. Water samples were taken from the river with a plastic cup with an extended arm scooping water from the river center at the sampling point.

The water parameters that were monitored were BOD5, CODcr, Total Nitrogen, Total Phosphorus, Turbidity, TSS and pH on a weekly basis. Appendix 1 tabulates the dosing volume, water parameter measurement record and weather record during the trial period.

Table 21 shows the water parameters before treatment at the beginning of the trial. The ultimate desired standard of the authorities is Level-Three, as indicated in the last column of the table for reference.

AquaClean Dosing Computation
A river is a continuous dynamic system with great variations in flow from time to time. It is not possible to accurately compute the water volume and retention time in the trial zone. We have computed the dosing based on the assumption that river flow is relatively low as has been noted at the site most of the time. The trial zone was designated from the 300m from the mouth of the Dianchi Lake upstream 1,460m, for a total treatment zone of 1,160m in length. The average width and depth at this section of the river is 6.0m and 0.9m respectively. This gives a total volume of 7,884 m3. The normal flow rate during without major dumping and rain is 0.3 m3/s. This gives an average retention time of 7.3 hours. That means the water takes approximately 7.3 hours from the beginning of the test zone at D1 to the end of test zone at T4. Since the retention time is less than 24 hours in the test zone, dosing of AquaClean is computed based on daily flow rate as per manufacturer’s recommendation.

Based on a 0.3 m3/s flow rate, daily volume of water flow is 26,000 m3 (6.8 million gallons). At 10 ppm inoculation, 68 gallons will be needed. At the time of project evaluation, the estimated flow was based on 3.2 million gallons per day as detected earlier. The inoculation was hence carried out with 32 gallons on 21 Nov 2004. The flow rate was subsequently detected at 6.8 million gallons per day, it was then recommended to maintain 4.7 ppm of daily flow rate per week for the next four week. Regular large volumes of untreated wastewater were found to have been dumped into the river, thus upsetting the water volume computation and trial progress. It was decided that the dosing be converted to 6 gallons (0.88 ppm per day based on daily flow volume) dosed on a daily basis from 13 Dec 2004 onwards. There were some minor changes to actual dosing depending on site condition and progress. In general, the daily dosing was divided into 4 portions with 65% dosing at dosing point C just before the start of biomedia. Very low dosage was applied at dosing point A and B because the river at this section is very narrow and has a low water volume. 15% of the estimated dosing was applied at dosing point D at the middle of the biomedia section to ensure that is sufficient bacteria to flow to the last section of the trial. With a flowing river of this nature, a single point dosing is sufficient as experienced in this trial.

6. WATER QUALITY MONITORING AND RESULT EVALUATION.
Water sample from four locations as indicated in Fig 3 namely T1, T2, T3 and T4 were taken on a weekly basis for water parameter monitoring. T1 is located 90m before the first dosing point upstream. The water parameter at T1 represents pre-treatment water sample. T2 is located at the middle of the biomedia zone. The water here is subject to two to three hours of AquaClean treatment as it flows from D1 to T2. T3 located further downstream, 650m from Dianchi Lake. The water at T3 has gone through approximately 5 hours of treatment under normal flow. T4 is the last water sample point at 300m before Dianchi Lake. The water at T4 has been treated for approximately 7 hours under normal flow rate.

The water parameter varies from day to day as upstream discharge changes. The water quality downstream is therefore greatly influenced by upstream water parameters, i.e. influent quality at T1. It is therefore meaningless to track the water quality over time like in a lagoon system. Our objective then is to track the improvement of water quality from T1 to T4 on the day of measurement.

The commencement of the trial period coincided with a very unfavorable period of cold temperature. Although Kunming City has the reputation of a city with eternal spring, there were two periods with sub-zero temperatures and snow which severely affected the effectiveness of AquaClean. The period from November to March falls in the dry season, however there were a few instances of heavy rainfall in addition to low temperatures during the trial period that changed the river water completely on 29th Nov 2004, 18th Dec 2004, 12th Jan 2005 and 23 March 2005. Besides the weather factors, the regular dumping of huge volumes of untreated polluted water upset the trial further. This is reflected on 6th March and 27th March 2005. The water quality improved significantly from T1 to T4 from 6 Feb 2004 to 27 Feb 2004. However, the improvement was severely interrupted by further dumping of a huge volume of untreated agricultural wastewater on Feb 28th 2005.

Following the dumping on 28th Feb, there was unexpected snowfall on 3rd and 4th of March with temperatures ranging from -1 to 10oC. Dosing of AquaClean was called off on 4th and 5th of March 2005 and resumed on 6th of March. Despite the interruption, the trial zone recovered its earlier ecological balance within two weeks from 6th March as seen on 20th March 2005. The ecological balance this time round was, however, upset by a huge volume of very alkaline wastewater dumped by a cement factory upstream. The river was completely covered with milky water on 23rd March 2005. The dosing of AquaClean ended on 29th March 2005 due to a delay in new shipment. Dosing resumed on 10th April 2005. However, the trial continued to be interrupted by blatant dumping of huge volumes of untreated wastewater. The trial ended on 22nd April 2005.

T1     Untreated Water sample T2     2nd water sample at biomedia zone T3     3rd water sample 650m from Dianchi Lake T4     4th water sample at 300m from Dianchi Lake

BOD5     mg/l

CODcr     mg/l

TSS     mg/l

Turbidity (NTU)

Total Nitrogen TN (mg/l)

Total Phosphate TP (mg/l)

The bad odor along the test zone was drastically reduced within one week of inoculation and was practically eliminated two weeks after inoculation. The river has remained odor free throughout the trial period. However, there was no change in bad odor upstream during the same period, thus confirming that AquaClean is very effective in odor reduction. This has also been corroborated by verbal surveys with local residents along the river.

The various types of microorganisms in the water were monitored during the trial period. 80% of plankton found at the beginning of the trial was Cyanophyta and Chlorophyta. The high percentage of these two types of plankton indicates that the water is heavily polluted. As the water quality improved in Feb 2005 at T3 and T4 locations, large amounts of Chrysophyta and Xanthophyta type of plankton appeared there, in line with water quality improvement. Protozoa type organisms were hardly seen in Xiba River before the trial. Large number of Protozoa and metazoan such as C. Cornuta, Cyclops strenuous and Sinocalanus Mystrophorus appeared at T3 and T4 locations in Jan and Feb 2005. Larger protozoa and metazoan such as Rotifera which live on small protozoa and plankton were found in extremely large quantities in late February 2005. Clusters of small fishes also appeared at T4 areas in late February 2005. Even kingfishers were attracted to the river by the presence of the small fish. Fig 4 shows some of the microorganisms described above.

On 26th Feb 2005, a very distinct improvement on the water from T1 to T4 was observed as shown in Fig 5 below.

The water before treatment at T1 was light grey with hardly any sign of life presence. At T2 where the biomedia is located, the water turbidity increased drastically due to the presence of large quantity of bacteria, plankton and algae. The water appeared very greenish. Protozoa and metazoan appeared at T3 further downstream, helping to reduce the algae content, giving the water a cleaner appearance. At T4, which is approximately 7 hours flowing time from D1, huge populations of larger protozoa and metazoan were eaten by the small fishes found there. The water looked very much cleaner with a transparency of more than 0.8m deep with underwater plants clearly visible. The presence of fishes further confirms that AquaClean bacteria are non-pathogenic and NOT harmful to higher forms of living organisms. As the protozoa and metazoan moves upstream and more fishes move in the test zone, it is expected that water at T3 and T4 can easily achieve a standard close to level-three where there is significant water clarity and fishes swimming in the river. This ideal condition with fishes swimming gracefully in the river is the ultimate objective every government authority would like to achieve. It is possible, with the help of AquaClean, to rehabilitate polluted rivers such as Xiba River with slow flowing water such that it attains the ideal environment with its natural ecology balance.

It is unfortunate that in the case of Xiba River, the trial project was unable to sustain the above condition due to the regular blatant discharge of huge volumes of polluted waste water although, despite this, the river demonstrated more resiliency and the ability to recover faster from these events.

7 CONCLUSION
a) Ability of AquaClean ACF-32 in rehabilitating flowing river.
The trial project has concluded positively that AquaClean is effective in rehabilitating a flowing river as achieved on 27th Feb 2004. It took three months from inoculation to achieve significant water parameter reduction, a period which was in line with the manufacturer’s expectations of 90 to 120 days. This was achieved even with the unexpected low temperatures in Nov and Dec 2004 and interruption of the project by repeated huge dumping of waste water into the river. Despite the numerous unexpected problems encountered during the trial, the experiment did arrive at the conclusion that it is possible for AquaClean to reinstate ecological balance in a highly polluted flowing river, bringing higher forms of living organisms back to life.

b) Effect on odor reduction by AquaClean ACF-32
The trial project has also concluded very positively that AquaClean is very effective in odor reduction and is non-pathogenic and not harmful to fishes, as claimed by the manufacturer.

c) Effect of pH Changes
The water at Xiba River has a pH ranging from 7.0 to 7.8 which is ideal for the survival and multiplication of AquaClean microbes. This is an ideal pH range for AquaClean ACF-32. There was no significant changes in pH, hence It is unable to draw any conclusion on impact of pH changes to AquaClean bacteria.

d) Effect of Temperature Changes
The trial results do show that AquaClean’s effectiveness reduces in temperatures below 10oC.

e) Conclusion on parameter measurement
The positive results achieved in Feb 2005 leads to the conclusion that AquaClean is effective in bringing down BOD, COD, TSS, Turbidity, Total Nitrogen and Total Phosphorous by half from T1 to T4, which represents only an average of 7 hours retention time. Although the water parameter at T4 has not achieved a level-three standard as set out by the authorities, the manufacturer of AquaClean is confident that a level-three standard or a standard at least close to level-three can be achieved in a complete river treatment where the bacteria has a much longer time to react and treat the water. Practical steps must be taken to prevent blatant dumping of huge volumes of untreated wastewater into the river, particularly chemical waste that inhibits the bacteria growth such as the highly alkaline cement plant waste.

f) AquaClean ACF-32 Dosage
The experiment commenced with an inoculation at 4.7 ppm, which is, less than half the 10 ppm recommended by the manufacturer. However, it was subsequently adjusted to approximately 1 ppm per day based on the daily flow rate. This dosing is higher than the recommendation for a stagnant lagoon of 1 to 2 ppm per week. The higher dosing was recommended to compensate for the irregular flow pattern of the river and the short retention time of the test zone. In a complete river project where the length of treatment is long, a much lower dosing is recommended.

g) Effect of Biomedia
Although biomedia was introduced for a 510m long stretch at the beginning part of the trial zone, the actual effects of biomedia could not be measured because there are no control cases for comparison. We strongly believe that the biomedia helps in retaining part of the microbe as the water flows. This is likely one of the contributing factors for success in the trial.

h) Recommendations are proposed for future river treatment with AquaClean:-

• i. It is strongly recommended that dosing of AquaClean for flowing rivers be done through a continuous automatic dripping dispenser rather than direct pouring into the river as has been done in this trial project. This is to prevent large quantity of bacteria being washed off if flow is inconsistent.
• ii. A holding pond of suitable size can be constructed to divert some wastewater into the pond to culture AquaClean bacteria to increase the bacteria count before its release into the river. The continuous dripping can be done at the inlet of this bleeding pond. In this way, the usage of AquaClean can be reduced by several fold thereby make any river treatment very economical. The principal supplier of AquaClean can provide a detailed project feasibility evaluation to the client.
• iii. Introduction of biomedia along the river with appropriate design and quantity is recommended for rivers with water flow rate exceeding 2 meters per minute. The AquaClean principal supplier can advise the client on an economical biomedia design and sizing.
• This report jointly prepared by Prof Hu Kailin of Kunming University of Science and Technology and Mr Goh Kwang Beng of BluePlanet-Asia, in collaboration with BluePlanet and Ecological Laboratories.