NKB 30303

Environmental Issues
and Waste Management

Chapter 2.2:
Wastewater Treatment

Wastewater Treatment
 Wastewater treatment is divided into 5 main areas:
 Preliminary treatment: removal of large solids to prevent
damage to the remainder of the unit operations

 Primary treatment: removal of suspended solids by settling

 Secondary treatment: removal of demand for oxygen

 Tertiary (or advanced) treatment: polishing or cleanup

processes (e.g. removal of nutrients such as phosphorous)

 Solids treatment & disposal: the collection, stabilization,

and subsequent disposal of the solids removed by
previous processes

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 Wastewater Treatment

 Primary treatment systems are usually physical

processes

 Secondary treatment processes are commonly

biological

 Tertiary treatment systems can be physical (e.g.

filtration to remove solids), biological (e.g.
oxidation pond to remove BOD) or chemical (e.g.
precipitation to remove phosphorus)

Wastewater Treatment

Effluent from wastewater treatment should meet these standards:

 BOD ≤ 15 mg/L
 SS ≤ 15 mg/L
 Phosphorous ≤ 1 mg/L

Preliminary Treatment
 Screens are used as the first step in treatment
plants and consist of a series of steel bars (about
2.5 cm or 1 inch apart)

 Screen are used for the removal of larger materials

that might damage equipment or hinder further
treatment

 The next treatment step is a comminutor, a circular

grinder designed to grind the solids coming through
the screen into pieces about 0.3 cm or smaller

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 Preliminary Treatment

Preliminary Treatment

Preliminary Treatment
 The third preliminary treatment step involves the
removal of grit or sand because they can wear out
and damage equipment (e.g. pump, flow meter etc.)

 Grit chamber is a wide place in the channel where

the flow is slowed sufficiently to allow the heavy grit
to settle without removing the light organic material

 The light biological solids must be further treated in

the plant, while the grit can be dumped

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 Primary Treatment
 After the grit chamber, most of the wastewater
treatment plants have a settling tank (also known as
sedimentation tank or clarifier) to settle most of the
solids. It can be circular or rectangular in shape
 The settling tank that follows preliminary treatment is
known as the primary clarifier
 The solids that drop to the bottom of a primary clarifier
are removed as raw sludge
 Raw sludge is odoriferous, can contain pathogenic
organisms and full of water – needs further treatment
before disposal

Primary Treatment
 Primary treatment can remove 60% of the solids,
about 30% of the BOD and 20% of the phosphorous

 If primary treatment is inadequate, solids, BOD and

phosphorous removal can be enhanced by addition
of chemicals, e.g. alum or lime (calcium hydroxide)
 Primary treatment without chemical addition is
followed by secondary treatment to remove BOD

Primary Treatment

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 Primary Treatment

Secondary Treatment
Fixed Film Reactors
 Trickling filter consists of a bed of media over which
the waste is trickled
 An active biological growth forms on the media, and
the organisms obtain their food from the waste
stream dripping over the bed
 Air is either forced through the media or air
circulation is obtained automatically by temperature
difference between air in the bed and the ambient
 The rotating arms distribute the waste evenly over
the entire bed

Secondary Treatment

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 Secondary Treatment
Fixed Film Reactors
 A modern modification of the trickling filter is the
rotating biological contactor or rotating disc

 The microbial growth occurs on rotating discs that

are slowly dipped into the wastewater, which
provides their food

 By bringing the discs out into the open air, the

microbes are able to obtain the necessary oxygen
to keep the growth

Rotating Biological Contactor

Secondary Treatment
Suspended Growth Reactors
 Activated sludge system consists of a tank with waste
liquid (from primary clarifier) and microorganisms

 Air is bubbled into the tank (aeration tank) to provide

O2 for the survival of the aerobic organisms

 The microorganisms decompose the waste (carbon)

to CO2 and H2O and produce more microorganisms

 The microorganisms are then separated from the

liquid in a settling tank (secondary or final clarifier)

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 Secondary Treatment
 The separated microorganisms exist at the bottom of
the final clarifier without additional food and become
hungry – known as “activated sludge”
 These settled and hungry microorganisms are then
pumped to the head of aeration tank for more food
from the primary clarifier – returned activated sludge
 The activated sludge process is a continuous
operation and will lead to excess of microorganisms.
Thus, it is necessary to waste some of the micro-
organisms and the waste activated sludge must be
treated before disposal

Secondary Treatment

Secondary Treatment
 The ratio of food-to-microorganisms (F/M) is a
major design parameter for activated sludge system

 Food (substrate) is measured as BOD, while the

suspended solids (microorganisms) in the waste
liquid is called mixed liquor suspended solid (MLSS)

 The ratio of BOD to MLSS (F/M ratio) or also known

as the loading, is calculated as pounds of BOD/day
per pound of MLSS in the aeration tank

 If the ratio is low and the aeration period is long, it

results in a high degree of treatment, or vice versa

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 Design of Activated Sludge System
 During exponential growth phase of microorganisms:
dX
rg   X
dt
X = number of microorganisms
μ = specific growth rate
max S

KS  S
μmax = maximum specific growth rate (at nutrient
saturation)
S = substrate or nutrient concentration
KS = saturation constant or half velocity

Design of Activated Sludge System

 Saturation constant, KS is the nutrient concentration
when the growth rate is half the maximum growth rate
 The death rate of microbes can be represented as:
dX
rd   kd X
dt
where kd is the decay (death) rate constant
 The net growth rate of microbe can now be written as:

  S
rg  rg  rd  X  k d X   max  X  k d X
 KS  S 

Design of Activated Sludge System

 Relation between the rate of microorganisms (X)
production and the consumption of the substrate (S):
dX dS
Y
dt dt
Y = yield (mass of microorganisms produced per mass of
substrate used), kg SS produced / kg BOD used

 The rate of substrate consumption can be written as:

dS 1  dX  X  max S  X
rS       
dt Y  dt  Y  KS  S  Y

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 Design of Activated Sludge System
 Liquid/hydraulic retention time is the average time
the liquid remains in the reactor:
V (volume of the aeration tank)
t  
Q (volumetric flow rate of the influent stream)
 Solids retention time (sludge age or mean cell
residence time) is the average time the solids stay
in the system:

1 KS  S
C  
  max S

Design of Activated Sludge System

 Assume the final clarifier is a perfect device that no

microorganisms leave in the effluent (Xe = 0):
XV XV
C   C 
Qw X r  Q  Qw  X e Qw X r

Design of Activated Sludge System

 The F/M ratio (ratio of the incoming BOD to MLSS):
QS0 S0
F /M  
VX Xt
 Substrate removal can be expressed as substrate
removal velocity, q:

S0  S
q
Xt

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 Design of Activated Sludge System
 Substrate removal velocity also can be expressed as:
Mass microorganisms Mass substrate
produced/Time x removed
q=
Mass microorganisms Mass microorganisms
in the reactor produced

  maxS 1
q  
Y Y K S  S   C Y

S0  S  max S  SXt
q    S 0  S  max
Xt Y K S  S  Y K S  S 

Example 1
A pond stays well mixed due to the wind and the
incoming and outflowing streams, both at 50 m3/d.
If the microbes in the pond consume the inflowing
biodegradable organic matter at Y = 0.6, determine

(a) The BOD5 leaving the pond

(b) The BOD removal efficiency of the pond
(c) The concentration of MLSS leaving the pond

Given S0 = 95 mg/L, X0 = 0 mg/L, µmax = 3/day,

KS = 60 mg/L, kd = 0.06/day and V = 200 m3.

Secondary Treatment
 Effluent from secondary treatment that has low BOD
and SS now is quite adequate for disposal into water
if the nutrient concentration is not high
 But before discharge, the treatment plants are
required to disinfect the effluent using chlorine to
reduce further possibility of disease transmission
 Chlorination occurs in a simple holding tank, where
all flow is in contact with the chlorine for 30 minutes
 Excess chlorine must then be removed through
dechlorination by bubbling in SO2, where the chlorine
is reduced and SO2 is oxidized to sulfate

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 Secondary Treatment
 Effluent from secondary treatment usually able to
meet the effluent standards of BOD and SS:

 However, phosphorous content remains high. The

removal of inorganic compounds, including
inorganic phosphorous and nitrogen compounds,
required advanced or tertiary wastewater treatment

Tertiary Treatment
 Nitrogen removal is accomplished by oxidizing
ammonia nitrogen to nitrate using Nitrobacter and
Nitrosomonas in a process called nitrification:

 Both reactions are slow and require sufficient O2

and long detention times
 To remove the nutrient properties of nitrogen, the
nitrate must be converted to N2 gas by facultative
and anaerobic bacteria (e.g. Pseudomonas) via
denitrification, requires source of C (e.g. methanol)

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 Tertiary Treatment
 Phosphorus can be removed chemically or biologically
 The most popular chemical methods use lime
[Ca(OH)2] and alum [Al2(SO4)3]
 The calcium ion at high pH will combine with
phosphate to form a white insoluble precipitate called
calcium hydroxyapatite [Ca10(PO4)6OH2] and calcium
carbonate [CaCO3] that are settled and removed
 The aluminum ion from alum precipitates as poorly
soluble aluminum phosphate [AlPO4] and aluminum
hydroxide [Al(OH)3]

Tertiary Treatment
 Biological method of phosphorus removal is
becoming popular because the process does not
produce more solids for disposal
 When the microorganisms in return activated
sludge are starved by oxygen after their removal in
the final clarifier, they show a strong tendency to
adsorb phosphorus of wastewater
 If the phosphorus-rich organisms are removed
quickly and wasted, the excess phosphorus leaves
with the waste activated sludge, which is beneficial
if the sludge is applied to farmland

Tertiary Treatment
 Several steps can be done under tertiary treatment
to further remove solids and organic matters
 Rapid sand filter can be used to remove residual
suspended solids and to polish the water
 Oxidation ponds are commonly used for BOD
removal. It is a large pond used to confine the plant
effluent before discharged into natural watercourse
 Activated carbon adsorption is also for BOD removal
to remove both organics and inorganics. It is an
enclosed tube/column where dirty water pumped up
from the bottom and clear water exiting at the top

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 Tertiary Treatment
 With nitrogen and phosphorus removal after tertiary
treatment, the effluent standard of the wastewater
is finally achieved:

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