An owner in Cebu asked why he could not just enlarge his septic tank instead of building an STP. We sampled the tank first. BOD was down, solids were down, and ammonia came out higher than it went in. Field notes on what a septic tank does, what it cannot do, and how we kept his tank and built the plant around it.
A new sewage treatment plant failed its first compliance test on ammonia. Nothing was mechanically wrong. Field notes on what commissioning actually is, why BOD comes back before ammonia, and why the acceptance test date is a technical decision.
A blower tripped on a Friday and nobody was on site until Monday. What we found in the tank, why BOD recovers in days and ammonia in weeks, what we did in order, and the design question underneath it.
Your STP can pass BOD and TSS and still fail ammonia, because the bacteria that remove ammonia are slow, alkalinity-hungry, oxygen-hungry and easy to kill. Field notes on the four things that quietly wipe them out, the food processing plant where I created my own nitrification problem with one piping decision, and what I check before anyone orders more bacteria.
