To remove phosphorus from the effluent of public wastewater treatment facilities, hundreds of enhanced phosphorus treatment processes have been introduced nationwide. However, these processes have a few problems including excessive maintenance cost and sludge production caused by inappropriate coagulant injection. Therefore, the optimal decision of coagulant dosage and automatic control of coagulant injection are essential. To overcome the drawbacks of conventional phosphorus removal processes, the integrated sedimentation and dissolved air flotation(SeDAF) process has been developed and a demonstration plant(capacity: 100 m3/d) has also been installed. In this study, various jar-tests(sedimentation and / or sedimentation·flotation) and multiple regression analyses have been performed. Particularly, we have highlighted the decision–making algorithms of optimal coagulant dosage to improve the applicability of the SeDAF process. As a result, the sedimentation jar-test could be a simple and reliable method for the decision of appropriate coagulant dosage in field condition of the SeDAF process. And, we have found that the SeDAF process can save 30 – 40% of coagulant dosage compared with conventional sedimentation processes to achieve total phosphorus (T-P) concentration below 0.2 mg/L of treated water, and it can also reduce same portion of sludge production.

A membrane bioreactor by sequentially alternating the inflow and by applying a two-stage coagulation control based on pre-coagulation was evaluated in terms of phosphorus removal efficiency and cost-savings. The MBR consisted of two identical alternative reaction tanks, followed by aerobic, anoxic and membrane tanks, where the wastewater and the internal return sludge alternatively flowed into each alternative reaction tank at every 2 hours. In the batch-operated alternative reaction tank, the initial concentration of nitrate rapidly decreased from 2.3 to 0.4 mg/L for only 20 minutes after stopping the inflow, followed by substantial release of phosphorus up to 4 mg/L under anaerobic condition. Jar test showed that the minimum alum doses to reduce the initial PO4-P below 0.2 mg/L were 2 and 9 mol-Al/mol-P in the wastewater and the activated sludge from the membrane tank, respectively. It implies that a pre-coagulation in influent is more cost-efficient for phosphorus removal than the coagulation in the bioreactor. On the result of NUR test, there were little difference in terms of denitrification rate and contents of readily biodegradable COD between raw wastewater and pre-coagulated wastewater. When adding alum into the aerobic tank, alum doses above 26 mg/L as Al2O3 caused inhibitory effects on ammonia oxidation. Using the two-stage coagulation control based on pre-coagulation, the P concentration in the MBR effluent was kept below 0.2 mg/L with the alum of 2.7 mg/L as Al2O3, which was much lower than 5.1∼7.4 mg/L as Al2O3 required for typical wastewater treatment plants. During the long-term operation of MBR, there was no change of the TMP increase rate before and after alum addition.