For roughly 7,000 rural communities, facultative lagoons are the answer to sewage waste. Why? These rural areas lack access to the intricate sewage waste pipe systems and cleaning facilities used in larger cities – primarily because they lack the infrastructure budgets to create such things. Unfortunately, they end up ultimately facing another issue. How do you handle lagoon sludge treatment and disposal?
Previously, sewage sludge treatment in these lagoons was either too expensive, damaging, or a combination of both. But Nano Gas™ Environmental has created a revolutionary new technology that cleans facultative lagoons for rural communities at a fraction of the cost of alternatives, with zero risks of damage. That technology is nanobubbles.
If you’re considering nanobubbles for your community’s sewage lagoon, there are five things you should know before getting started. We discuss each of these key points in detail below. But, before we do, it helps to comprehensively understand what sewage lagoons are and how sludge comes to build up in them.
What Are Sewage Lagoons?
Sewage lagoons are a series of ponds where a waste stream is pumped. By waste stream, we mean a stream of human waste materials flushed down the toilet into the sewage lines. These waste materials are usually handled via naturally occurring oxygen and bacteria. The first pond into which the stream is fed will generally be the “dirtiest,” whereas each additional pond being fed into will be cleaner.
The sizeable municipal waste treatment systems used in cities and large towns are generally considered more effective at dealing with human waste. But the trade-off is that they’re much more expensive to build and maintain, requiring operators, separation equipment, aeration equipment, a large building to hold these and much more. These high costs mean they aren’t a good fit for areas without large budgets, like rural communities or small subdivisions.
Enter sewage lagoons, which don’t require any of those significant expenses. Creating a sewage lagoon to deal with wastewater is as easy as digging a few shallow holes in the ground and allowing nature to take care of the waste for you.
The downside? Eventually, most sewage lagoons will fill with sludge. That sludge will render them not only inoperable but also hazardous to the local ecosystem and (potentially) the human population. But how does sludge manage to build up in the first place?
What Causes Sludge in Facultative Lagoons?
There are many reasons why organic sludge builds up in facultative lagoons despite a natural eradication process. But when it comes to organic waste problems, it always boils down to one thing: the balance of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria that work together to break down waste has been thrown out of balance.
There’s a lot of science behind facultative lagoons and how they work, but we won’t get into that here. If you’d like to learn more about it, you can check out our other blog on Shallow Lagoon Maintenance. This other blog also lists how bacteria can be thrown out of balance.
Now that you have a baseline understanding of facultative lagoons and how sludge builds up in them, we can move on to the topic at hand. Below, we dive into five things you need to know about using nanobubbles in your community’s sewage lagoon.
1. Nanobubbles Don’t Damage Facultative Lagoons
There are a few types of sludge treatment available for facultative lagoons. Unfortunately, the main alternatives to Nano Gas™ Environmental’s nanobubble solution are chemicals or dredging. Both can cause significant damage to facultative lagoons.
Chemicals Disrupt Natural Processes
Chemicals damage sewage lagoons by further disrupting the natural processes required to break down organic waste. While chemicals can help break down accumulated sludge and eradicate harmful algae, they also eliminate the “good stuff.”
When the good stuff is gone, the harmful algae (including the toxic kinds) can spread like wildfire. Harmful algae can decrease the available oxygen, and the cycle starts again.
Dredging Can Cause Physical Damage
Dredging can cause physical damage to the facultative lagoon. During dredging, expensive pieces of heavy machinery dig out accumulated sludge manually. However, precision is challenging with such large pieces of equipment, and damage to the bottom or sides of a sewage lagoon is likely.
Nanobubbles Are 100% Safe
On the other hand, nanobubbles don’t present this issue. Nanobubbles use the facultative lagoon’s natural ecosystem to help eradicate built-up sludge – with zero disruptive and toxic chemicals required. This solution also doesn’t cause the physical damage that dredging can. Our nanobubble solution is safe for your facultative lagoon and any equipment you may use.
2. It’s the Most Cost-Effective Sludge Treatment
Nanobubbles are, by far, the most cost-effective sludge wastewater treatment option. Since dredging requires expensive heavy machinery and many manhours to complete, it’s a million-dollar project. Few small rural communities (or subdivisions) can afford that huge price tag.
Although chemicals may be far more affordable than dredging, it can still cost thousands. Worse, chemicals are far from effective, and you can end up spending thousands numerous times trying to solve the issue – only to make it worse in the long run.
Nanobubbles aren’t only more effective, but the price tag is significantly less. After all, we firmly believe that rural communities shouldn’t be forced into non-compliance and potential safety hazards simply because they don’t have the budget for such extensive, daunting projects.
How much more affordable are nanobubbles? One Texas community solved their million-dollar dredging problem for less than $100,000 with Nano Gas™ Environmental. That’s a savings of more than 95%!
3. Nano Gas™ Environmental Creates Customized Solutions
No two facultative lagoons have the exact same problems, and our team of experts understands this intimately. That’s why we’ve developed a thorough testing process that allows us to discover exactly what problems plague your unique lagoon.
Initial Analysis
Before anything else, our team will thoroughly analyze your facultative lagoon. Our analysis includes several crucial steps, including (but not necessarily limited to):
- Bathymetric Testing: is an underwater sonar mapping technique. It allows us to get accurate imaging of how thick the sludge layer at the bottom of your lagoon is.
- Toxin Analysis: helps identify any toxins that may be present in your lagoon. If toxins are identified, additional treatment steps may be required to neutralize them.
- Algae Inspection: helps us determine how much algae has been built up. The more algae present, the less oxygen in the water – and the more we need to inject.
- Bacteria DNA Testing: identifies the exact bacteria forms living in your lagoon. This helps us determine which helpful bacteria we need to introduce to reclaim balance.
Customizing a Solution
Once we’ve determined your lagoon’s specific problems, we create a customized solution to solve them. This process generally includes three steps:
- Bacteria and Enzyme Enhancement: If necessary, we’ll add specific helpful bacteria uniquely suited to cleaning it. This helps reclaim a balance required in the lagoon’s ecosystem to allow it to perform its intended function.
- Nanobubble Creation: We create nanobubbles with our class-leading equipment. Unlike other companies, Nano Gas™ Environmental can create nanobubbles using any gas so that it can be tailored to your lagoon’s specific needs.
- Nanobubble Injection: Once our unique solution is done, we’ll inject it into your lagoon so it can get to work.
After the initial nanobubble injection, our team will remotely monitor the treatment and make appropriate adjustments as necessary. We can also provide ongoing maintenance to prevent future problems, which is discussed more in point number five.
4. Lagoon Sludge Treatment to Help Bring You into Compliance
Experts suggest that as many as half of all facultative lagoons in the United States have fallen out of regulatory compliance. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has strict regulations that all facultative lagoons must comply with. If the EPA deems your lagoon doesn’t meet these requirements, you could be punished with hefty fines or worse.
If the EPA has already warned you that you need to regain compliance, our nanobubble solution is an excellent way to move forward. But it’s even better if you can solve your facultative lagoon problems before the EPA gets involved. Either way, Nano Gas™ Environmental is here to help!
5. Ongoing Maintenance Prevents Future Problems
While getting your facultative lagoon back in working order is great, this shouldn’t be the end of your sludge treatment plan. The best option is to keep it from falling out of compliance or working order again.
Thankfully, Nano Gas™ Environmental can help with this, too. We offer ongoing facultative lagoon maintenance so things never get out of control again. Although there’s a cost to ongoing maintenance, it pales in comparison to the costs of fixing the issue every few years.
Get Started with More Affordable, Effective Lagoon Sludge Treatment!
Nanobubbles are an effective, cost-efficient way to deal with lagoon sludge treatment, beating alternative options across all categories. Even better, they can be used to maintain your facultative lagoon so that expensive restoration projects are unnecessary moving forward.
Interested in learning more about our customized solutions for your rural community’s facultative lagoon? At Nano Gas™ Environmental, we’re ready to implement our automated technology and revolutionary solution! Please call us today at (832) 903-5961 or click the button below to discuss how we can help you.
