A Tribute to the Floc Doc

Professor David Jenkins (“The Floc Doc”) is an iconic figure in the wastewater industry with a career spanning over 60 years including 40 years teaching at UC Berkeley. During his storied career he gave numerous technical presentations, authored many industry leading publications, particularly in the field of activated sludge filament identification and control. David’s passion for our industry also manifested itself in his love of working with treatment plant personnel solving operational challenges and optimizing plants. This presentation will reflect on my 35+ year relationship with David and will include specific examples, anecdotes and stories illustrating David’s contributions to the industry along with his wisdom and sense of humor.
The early years – working with David and the team on the production of the “Manual on the Causes and Control of Activated Sludge Bulking Foaming and Other Solids Separation Problems “, a must have reference found in most treatment plants. Will include specific examples highlighting use of the manual to solve bulking problems by relating filament organism presence and identification to specific causative factors, such as solving low DO bulking by use of the Palm/Jenkins F/M, DO relationship. David’s lessons on effective RAS chlorination for bulking control will also be highlighted.
Next the presentation will highlight David’s and the teams research into the key fundamentals for successful selector operation, including development of optimum feast/famine conditions for filament control. Industry examples will be presented and a brief discussion on how fundamental selector research laid the foundation for our current densification efforts.
Finally, development of the fundamental principles on the causes and control of activated sludge foaming will conclude the presentation. The physical properties of foam forming bacteria will be discussed along with their trapping/recycling properties and development of successful control strategies, including surface wasting.
The presentation will use industry examples for each topic of David’s research along with his unique approach and humor (“there is no such thing as a stupid microorganism”).