WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANS

Wastewater treatment plants may be distinguished by the type of wastewater to

be treated such as:
o Sewage
o Industrial wastewater
o Agricultural wastewater
o Leachate

1. Sewage Treatment Plants

may include primary treatment to remove solid material, secondary
treatment to remove dissolved and suspended organic material as well as
the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus, and disinfection to kill diseasecausing microorganisms

Sewage sludge treatment - describes the processes used to manage

and dispose of sewage sludge produced during sewage treatment.

Sludge - thick, soft, wet mud or a similar viscous mixture of liquid and
solid components, especially the product of an industrial or refining
process
- is mostly water with lesser amounts of solid material removed from liquid
sewage. Primary sludge includes settleable solids removed during primary
treatment in primary clarifiers. Secondary sludge separated in secondary
clarifiers includes treated sewage sludge from secondary treatment
bioreactors.

Sewage treatment plant is now often replaced with wastewater treatment

plant.

2. Tertiary Treatment
term applied to polishing methods used following a traditional sewage
treatment sequence
increasingly applied in INDUSTRIALIZED countries and most common
technologies are micro filtration or synthetic membranes
o

Microfiltration (commonly abbreviated to MF) is a type of

physical filtration process where a contaminated fluid is passed
through a special pore-sized membrane to separate
microorganisms and suspended particles from process liquid.

Microbial Denitrification- is commonly used to remove nitrogen from

sewage and municipal wastewater

Ozone wastewater treatment- requires the use of an ozone generator,

which decontaminates the water as ozone bubbles percolate through the
tank but is energy intensive

Aerobic treatment- one of the latest and very promising treatment

technologies which use natural processes to treat wastewater

3. Industrial Wastewater treatment Plants

Sources of Industrial wastewater
o Iron and steel industry
o Mines and quarries
o Food industry
o Pulp and paper industry
o Complex organic chemicals industry
o Nuclear industry
o Water treatment
Constructed wetland (CW) - is an artificial wetland created for the
purpose of treating anthropogenic discharge such as municipal or
industrial wastewater, storm water runoff.
4. Recycle
An industrial wastewater treatment plant may include one or more of the
following rather than the conventional primary, secondary, and disinfection
sequence of sewage treatment:
API oil-water separator- removes oil from wastewater
Clarifier removes solids from wastewater
Roughing filter reduces the biochemical oxygen demand of
wastewater
Carbon filtration plant- removes toxic dissolved organism
compounds from wastewater
Advanced electrodialysis reversal (EDR) has ion exchange
membranes
5. Agricultural wastewater treatment plants
is the treatment of wastewaters produced in the course of agricultural
activities
6. Leachate treatment plants
are used to treat leachate from landfills

Leachate- is any liquid that, in the course of passing through matter,

extracts soluble or suspended solids, or any other component of the
material through which it has passed

Treatment options include:

o Biological treatment- is worldwide the most common practice for
leachate treatment. Biological systems can be divided in anaerobic
and aerobic treatment processes.
o Mechanical treatment by ultrafiltration (using a medium fine
enough to retain colloidal particles, viruses, or large molecules)
o Treatment with active carbon filters