In 1998, two upper North Bosque River segments were designated as impaired
due to the nonpoint source (NPS) pollution of phosphorus (P) to these segments in the
watershed. As a result, two Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) were applied which
called for the reduction of annual loading and annual average soluble reactive P (Sol P)
concentrations by 50 %. This study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of two
prospective new technologies, an Electrocoagulation (EC) system, and a Geotubeî
dewatering system to potentially aid the dairy farmers in meeting the goals set by the
TMDLs.
The EC system analyzed in this study used chemical pretreatment to coagulate
and separate solids in effluent pumped from the dairy lagoon; the liquid then flowed
over charged iron electrodes giving off ions that cause coagulation and precipitation of P
and other metals. Overall, the performance of the system was consistently highly
effective in reducing total phosphorus (TP) and Sol P, on average, reducing these
constituents by 96% and 99.6% respectively from the dairy lagoon effluent. However
this consistency did not hold for the rest of the analytes.
In the Geotubeî dewatering system geotextile tubes were utilized to dewater
dairy lagoon effluent. Results showed this system performed very well in filtering solids
from the dairy lagoon effluent, removing an average of 93.5 % of the total solids
between the two pumping and dewatering events of March and April. It was effective in
removing nutrients and metals as well. The average percent reduction of TP and Sol P
for the two events were very high at 97% and 85 % respectively.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/4449 |
| Date | 30 October 2006 |
| Creators | Lazenby, Lynn Anne |
| Contributors | Mukhtar, Saqib |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | 3782907 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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