By Tim Ellis

A combined approach to maximize wet weather treatment is the topic of our open access article in the August 2017 edition of Water Environment Research or WER.

In their paper on wet weather clarifier performance, Daigger et al. introduce a strategy to increase capacity by mitigating the effect of increased solids and hydraulic loading using a step-feed flow regime. Using the City of Akron’s Water Reclamation Facility as a test case, the team used modeling and computational fluid dynamics to determine that the wet weather capacity of the existing facility could be more than doubled using the step feed strategy and minor clarifier improvements. Effluent limits with respect to BOD5. TSS, ammonia, and total phosphorus were met during wet weather excursions using this strategy.

Click here to download Marrying Step Feed with Secondary Clarifier Improvements to Significantly Increase Peak Wet Weather Treatment Capacity: An Integrated Methodology by Glen T. Daigger; John S. Siczka; Thomas F. Smith; David A. Frank; J. A. McCorquodale. And watch for the September issue of WER, featuring more cool research and available on site at WEFTEC!

About Dr.Timothy Ellis

Dr. Timothy G. Ellis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering at Iowa State University in Ames.  He is currently serving as the Executive Editor for the Water Environment Research Journal and recently served as a Fulbright Teaching Scholar at the University of Malta.

Dr. Ellis has previously worked internationally as a senior engineer with a major consulting firm in the United Arab Emirates on the retrofit of a wastewater treatment facility which included full effluent reuse.  Following his time as a consultant, he returned to academia to pursue his doctoral degree at Clemson University.  In 1995 he joined the faculty at Iowa State University as an assistant professor, where he has been conducting environmental engineering research and teaching in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering. He was promoted to associate professor in 2001.  From the period of 2008 to 2010, he served as the Assistant Chair for Undergraduate Affairs for the department. His research area is primarily involved with biological wastewater treatment systems and is focused on three general areas:  respirometric evaluation and modeling of biodegradation; anaerobic treatment of agricultural, industrial, and municipal wastes; and a newly patented high rate anaerobic system, termed the static granular bed reactor (SGBR) for renewable energy production.

Dr. Ellis has secured research contracts as a sole principal investigator valued at $1.5M and collaborated on research projects valued at an additional $1.8M.  He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed papers and given more than 60 technical presentations at national and international conferences. His publications have been cited more than 300 times in the scientific literature, and he is the 16th most cited author in Water Environment Research. In 2013 he was named the Outstanding Government Civil Engineering by the Iowa Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers.  He has received numerous departmental and engineering college awards at Iowa State, including the Outstanding Faculty Award (2008, 2002, and 2001); the Anderlik Faculty Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching (2005); Outstanding Advisor Recognition Award (2002); the Shafer Award for excellence in teaching, research, and service (1999); and Leadership through Academic Diversity Faculty Involvement Award (1999).

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