Kemira, a chemicals company that serves water-intensive industries, has partnered with Vyborg Water Utility, the Finnish Ministry of Environment and the John Nurminen Foundation on a wastewater treatment project to reduce phosphorus discharge from Vyborg into the Baltic Sea.
The Vyborg wastewater treatment plant will conduct trial runs for wastewater phosphorus removal, using chemical precipitation to achieve the recommended concentration of total phosphorus in wastewater, as specified by the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission.
The John Nurminen Foundation has supplied the wastewater treatment plant with storage and precipitant dosing equipment, while the Finnish Ministry of the Environment is helping in the technical implementation of the trial run that will use coagulants from Kimera’s St. Petersburg plant.
The project, which is estimated to cost around EUR200,000, will continue the tests at the plant for six months, resulting in an annual reduction of approximately 20 tonnes in the amount of phosphorus that end up in the Gulf of Finland.
The test results will help Vyborg Water Utility and the John Nurminen Foundation construct a permanent phosphorus removal system at the wastewater treatment plant by 2012 to reduce eutrophic discharges from Vyborg into the eastern Gulf of Finland.
Vyborg Water Utility CEO Igor Smirnov said that the removal of phosphorus will not only improve the quality of the water close to Vyborg and in Vyborg Bay, but will also reduce the amount of algae, including poisonous blue-green algae.