62    ENHANCED TREATMENT OF
HIGH STRENGTH SOFT DRINK
BOTTLING WASTEWATERS
James C. O'Shaughnessy, Professor and Head
Department of Civil Engineering
Worchester Polytechnic Institute
Worchester, Massachusetts 01609
Frederic C. Blanc, Professor
Department of Civil Engineering
Northeastern University
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Steven H. Corr, Vice President
Alejandro Toro, Engineer
Weston and Sampson Engineers, Inc.
Wakefield, Massachusetts 01880
INTRODUCTION
The Coca Cola Bottling Company of Cape Cod began production at a new facility in Sandwich,
Massachusetts in 1984. The Department of Environmental Quality Engineering required that the
company construct an on-site treatment facility to handle the discharge from the bottling operation.
That facility was designed to achieve effluent quality of less than 20 mg/L BOD5 and TSS prior to
discharging into the ground.1
The industrial wastewater treatment facility was constructed in early 1984 and placed on line in
June of that year. The plant consisted of the following:
1. Two lined lagoons with a volume of 267,800 gallons each providing a detention time of
30 days at summer design flow. The lagoons were designed to operate in series and were
aerated through a diffused fine bubble aeration system.
2. Two rapid infiltration basins for effluent disposal. The basins were designed based on a
percolation rate of 4 gallons per day per square foot.
Chemical feed equipment was provided for the addition of nutrients. Nitrogen and phosphorus
were added after the initial start up of the plant. pH neutralization for the system using 50% caustic
soda was also provided.
The design of the wastewater treatment system was based on pilot plant work conducted on the
wastewater effluent from the old production facility in South Sagamore.1 That work indicated that a
thirty-day detention time with aeration would reduce the influent BOD from 1200 mg/L to between 5
and 10 mg/L. Based on that pilot plant study, the design parameters shown in Table I were established.
BACKGROUND
Following start up of the plant in the summer of 1984, several operational problems were experienced which prevented the facility from meeting the groundwater discharge permit limits of 20 mg/L
for BOD and TSS.
The first problem encountered involved the complete destruction of all bacteria in the facility due to
failure of a valve on a caustic line. The pH of the wastewater increased to over 12 following the
inadvertent dumping of 700 gallons of 50% caustic into the lagoons. The treatment plant was
neutralized with sulfuric acid and restarted using an inoculation of bacteria.
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