Don’t see your question? Contact the Eastern Shore Microbes team and get an answer ASAP!
Yes, because there is no mechanical equipment or electrical usage, and in some cases alternate means of disposal are eliminated (e.g. hauling away for disposal at WWTPs or deep wells, or discharge to surface water bodies), thereby reducing a facilities carbon footprint and protecting the environment from the harmful effects of very salty water.
As part of our normal maintenance contracts Eastern Shore Microbes takes full responsibility for maintaining the activity in your lagoons. Once the population is developed and stabilized, you can expect to receive fresh nutrients and additional cultures about 4 times each year.
No. Microbes are not harmed by cold weather. Their overall metabolic activity does slow so there may be slightly less evaporation. Even then, ESM alters the nutrients and microbial populations so your lagoon continues to function all winter with evaporation rates exceeding untreated lagoons. H.E.A.T. was used to evaporate brine in Alberta Canada in December so it does continue to work in the cold.
No. ESM’s custom designed nutrients provide all that is needed.
Beneficial, but absolutely not needed. If aeration is present we can use it. Our cultures are fully adapted to low oxygen tensions in saturated brines so there is not much gain from in-brine aerators. In fact, in many cases the client can turn off the aerators and eliminate maintenance issues and electrical costs associated with that mechanical equipment.
In an ESM managed lagoon this should never happen. ESM’s maintenance process constantly checks the population and monitors for problems. You should never need to worry about a large mortality.
Our maintenance process will do the technical part of this. However, it is good to perform a simple check of the lagoon on a regular basis and we will show whomever you designate exactly what they need to do as the microbes work for you.
Absolutely! H.E.A.T. depends on maintaining a healthy microbial population in a lagoon. Fresh waste brine helps us do that. The O&M is then a simple matter of adding missing ingredients to account for the addition. This is all included as a part of ESM’s standard maintenance.
Yes. H.E.A.T. is uniquely positioned to be the perfect end game for ZLD applications, taking care of the most difficult, last step in the process with no energy input.
Yes. H.E.A.T. does not use any outside energy input which is in great contrast to the aforementioned technologies.
Not at all. H.E.A.T. microbes are not affected by any type of mechanical concentrator and can simply be added to the system. Also H.E.A.T. can even be applied to brines at lower concentrations so the concentrators don't need to be run as long.
The most cost-efficient way to facilitate this process is to inoculate the lagoon(s) as early in the spring as possible to take advantage of the summer temperatures, sunlight and dryness; however, H.E.A.T. can be started in any pond at any time of the year. Cold weather simply slows microbial proliferation.
We deliver totes filled with nutrients and microbes as they are needed. These are set around your lagoon and then drained via gravity into the brine. Rinsing the totes with brine to remove any microbes and/or nutrient that settled during shipment is a good idea.
ESM will provide a schedule as part of our service but no more than once a month during the first year and bi-monthly thereafter. The process consists only of filling up sterile bottles (which we supply) from each lagoon being treated and shipping to ESM (please see the next question for specific tests conducted by ESM).
The current standard analyses involve Biochemical Oxygen Demand (modified for high salt); total microbial population counts, conductivity, pH, specific gravity and loss on ignition. We also check our nutrient levels.
ESM does all needed tests in our labs.
Once H.E.A.T. is established in a lagoon ESM provides all needed O&M services. Generally, this means a minimum of bi-monthly visits with sampling. As with the ramp-up our maintenance services include all needed cultures and nutrient additions. The cost has to be determined on a site by site basis and depends largely on the volume of brine in the pond(s), the chemical makeup, and how much brine is produced each month.
Wind action and microbial movement will rapidly distribute the organism and nutrients throughout any lagoon.
No. We can easily work with any size lagoon or any minimum volume.
This solution requires no mechanical equipment, no electrical infrastructure, no controls and no conveyance (piping) system. All that is needed is a forklift to transport totes from receiving to the edge of the lagoon, and a small portable pump to rinse the totes with lagoon water is desirable. A flow meter on the inflow pipes to measure volumes added is good but not always required. No other investment in infrastructure or equipment have been needed to date.
As previously described, H.E.A.T. has no mechanical components and so there is no operational complexity and there is no need for skilled labor.
There are numerous evaporation curves, some simple, some very detailed. But as TDS, especially salt, increases the evaporation rate decreases. At high salts you have lost about 1/3 of the evaporation rate of fresh water in any given habitat. This is why evaporation ponds fill up.
H.E.A.T. will bring the evaporation rate of concentrated salt brine to well over that of fresh water. Our current full-scale project in a 6-acre lagoon evaporated 946,600 gallons from January to May 2020 in a cold-weather climate. A companion, identical lagoon without H.E.A.T. gained 373,000 gallons from precipitation.
Yes. Although the acceleration from H.E.A.T. actually improves because the organisms prefer much higher salt concentrations.
Counterintuitively, the higher the salt content, the better the technology works; meaning that where all other technologies struggle or fail, H.E.A.T. works best. There is no upper salt limit.
This is a bit to generalized for a direct answer. The salt should be safe for uses such as road salt, or refined into water softener salt. However, "salt" includes a wide definition of chemicals and the material that ends up in the bottom of each pond will be determined by the mix of materials in the original brine, that makes it difficult to answer this question without specifics.
Clarifying brine would remove the nutrients our microbes feed upon. The plant would also have a solid waste with which to deal and the chemicals may negatively impact H.E.A.T. Plan to let our microbes eat your waste.
So far H.E.A.T. is being used as the only treatment available for hide brine in meat packing. However, it’s use is expanding to include evaporation of Reverse Osmosis reject brines, Lithium production, blow down brines from electrical plants, mining wastes and oil field produce brine. It has been tested in oil field brine and successfully accelerated evaporation while cleaning the brine but recent economics in that industry have limited its application.