Brainerd Chemical Company

Applications for PAA in water that Heimburger & Company, Inc. provides to our regional customers in the Pacific Northwest U.S & Canada), Southwest U.S. and Mountain Regions (U.S. & Canada) include:

• Disinfection and microbial control in municipal sewage and wastewater effluent from treatment facilities (including Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) treat and discharge locations)
• Odor and corrosion control in municipal wastewater facility collections and conveyance systems
• Odor and sulfate-reducing anaerobic bacteria control in non-aerated municipal and industrial wastewater and process water lagoons and ponds
• Control of reduced sulfides and acid producing bacteria in produced water clean-up and frac water pretreatment and additionally, well bore scale control during oil and gas extraction
• Biofouling control in pulp, paper and board white water, wastewater, and process water streams
• Control of slime-forming bacteria in once-through and recirculating cooling water applications in many industrial setting including refineries, petrochemical plants, steel and other metal production and metal finishing (e.g., electroplating) plants, aircraft manufacturing and land and water transportation and construction/farming equipment plants
• Membrane cleaning for Reverse-Osmosis (RO), Ultra-Filtration (UF) and other membrane-based (e.g., MBR) water and wastewater processing plants.

Additionally, PAA produced by Brainerd Chemical can be utilized in food & beverage processing plants (including those producing products for human and animal consumption) as follows:

• Treatment of process water to facilitate its reuse and wastewater treatment (e.g., pretreatment ahead of discharge to a POTW to control sulfide, COD and/or Fats, Oils and Grease (FOG))
• Use in a wastewater treatment facility that is generating reuse water for agricultural, horticultural, and public land (private, city, county, state, federal) usage where this use has been permitted
• For sanitary reasons (e.g., floor washdowns, pipe cleaning, stainless-steel processing equipment) after dilution with potable water to a level recommended on the product’s pail, drum or tote label provided by Brainerd Chemical
• Application to irrigation water as an additive to sanitize and control plant disease and/or to promote food crop health through reduced soil hardness that limits root uptake of water & nutrients.

Compared to chlorine-based sanitizers and disinfectants, PAA does not form disinfection by-products or DBTs (e.g., Trihalomethanes [THMs]) that can persist and accumulate in water that supplies a nearby potable water treatment plant.  These DPTs includes chemical compounds that are suspected carcinogens in humans.

Residual chlorine from chlorine-based disinfection of wastewater is toxic to aquaculture and chlorine-based disinfection of wastewater often requires dechlorination (typically by addition of another chemical that reacts with chlorine (e.g., [sodium thiosulfate]) to meet EPA discharge limits for a municipal wastewater or stormwater treatment facility.  In comparison, disinfection of wastewater or process water in industrial or municipal applications does not require destruction of residual PAA that typically can be controlled during treatment to result in a concentration level in water of less than 0.5 mg/L.

There is increasing understanding by wastewater treatment plant personnel that not only pathogenic bacteria but also various viruses and protozoan parasites need to be addressed and removed to achieve low target levels in discharged water, so there are increasing requirements on disinfection methodology that is best suited to do this.  PAA and UV treatment (perhaps assisted by up-stream PAA to remove organic and inorganic compounds that interfere with UV disinfection efficiency) are being adopted based on a growing experience base in North America.

Additionally, there is strong evidence that after many years of using chlorine-based products to disinfect municipal wastewater, key pathogenic bacteria that include E. coli, enterococci (EC) and those classified as Total Coliforms (TC) have built-up resistance to chlorine in any form, requiring that chlorine dosage be increased which is also increasing both the formation of DBTs in discharged effluent and demand for dechlorination chemical addition.

PAA, when added to wastewater to disinfect pathogenic bacteria (e.g., [E. coli, EC, and TC]) dissociates nearly completely after 30-60 minutes after being applied to an untreated water into acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide then disassociates slowly into oxygen and water while simultaneously, acidic acid begins to dissociate into carboxylic acid (COOH) and methyl radical (CH3^–) that is eventually converted by aquatic microorganisms to carbon dioxide (CO₂) that is eventually converted to oxygen by trees and other plant life that it encounters.

With an existing UV disinfection system at a wastewater treatment facility, PAA is an environmentally friendly choice compared to liquid chlorine or sodium hypochlorite when either there is an unplanned outage (e.g., power grid interruption) or a planned outage (when the wastewater treatment plant must be expanded due to increasing influent flow rate or an increase in removal of pathogenic bacteria, virus or protozoan parasites is required with an updated NPDES discharge permit.

Heimburger & Company, Inc. would be pleased to review how PAA can assist your municipality or industrial processing plant to achieve your goals for optimal disinfection of wastewater and sanitation of process equipment.

Please reach out to us via our Contact Form when you would like for us to begin finding ways to improve your process.