Treatment of mixed municipal and winery wastewaters in a conventional activated sludge process: a case study.

The possibility of co-treating municipal and winery wastewaters in a conventional activated sludge process was studied at full scale. The wastewater treatment plant considered in this paper operated an extended-oxidation process during vintage (four month per year) and a pre-denitrification/ oxidation process during the rest of the year. The experimentation showed that good performances, in terms of COD and nitrogen removal, could be obtained in both cases: 90% and 60%, for COD and nitrogen removal, respectively. Thanks to the high solid retention times applied to the system (up to 48 days) the waste activated sludge production was low (0.20 kgMLVSS/kgCODremoved) and respiration was the main process for carbon removal. Nitrification was always satisfactory while the behaviour of the denitrification process during vintage was not totally understood and further studies are going on.