Technical Bulletin No. 0359: A Comparison of Air and Oxygen Activated Sludge Process Performance in the Pulp and Paper Industry

The contents of this technical bulletin are the result of a study carried out to determine if there were identifiable benefits of improved performance in activated sludge plants using molecular oxygen as opposed to air. The data used included the National Council's treatment plant performance database to provide information on the effluent discharge quality of five pure oxygen activated sludge treatment systems for BOD and total suspended solids. For comparison, the performance of five air activated sludge processes was also presented.