This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will engineer a fully automated, trailer-mounted Supersaturated Dissolved Oxygen Injector (SDOX) and determine the effects of addition of dissolved oxygen (DO) to impaired waterways. Waterways with low dissolved oxygen cannot support fish and other aquatic life and are dominated by anaerobic microbial digestive processes. If the amount of organic nutrients in a waterway is such that resulting bacterial populations consume oxygen at a rate higher than can be replenished to the system through natural aeration, then DO concentration is reduced until anaerobic conditions prevail. The potential utility of the SDOX unit ranges from remediation of waterways that have been impaired by long term exposure to organics (due to excessive or improper fertilization practices or other anthropogenic impacts) to emergency response for treatment of organic spills (from wastewater treatment facilities, animal waste lagoons, petroleum spills and the like).
Currently, there are no practical methods to rapidly response to a spill of organics into a body of water. One of the most common organic spills is the accidental release of untreated grey water from a municipal wastewater treatment facility. As a result of the Clean Water Act, each state has mandated water quality parameters for the release of pollutants from any point source (such as wastewater treatment facilities). The development of the technology described in this proposal will provide a practical method to remediate spills that may be significantly less expensive than state imposed fines.
