Waste Water Treatment: Waste Water Plant

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

-S.T. Coleridge

I thought of writing these lines from the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner because it was the first thing that came to mind when I began writing about waste water. Not only do these lines describe water in the oceans, but it helps visualize a scene which might occur if waste water ceases to be treated at a plant.

Waste Water – What is it?

Waste water is defined as water that carries wastes from industries, businesses and homes. This water contains dissolved or suspended solids.

Another subset of waste waster is sewage, that is, water contaminated with urine of faces. This term is used to refer to municipal, domestic or industrial waste products that are usually disposed of via a pipe or similar structure. This is sometimes done in a cesspool emptier.

What steps can I take to save water?

A good question by any standards, here is what you can do:

• Decrease the time spent in the shower.
• Make sure to turn off the faucet while shaving and/or brushing your teeth.
• Use washing machines that load from the front.
• Include reduced-flow faucets or water saving faucet inserts of aerators in the house or office.
• Ensure that leaking or dripping faucets and running toilets are repaired.
• Replace old high-flow toilets with ones that save water.
• Put up dams in toilet tanks or fill a plastic container or milk jug with rocks and then place it in the toilet tank.

What are the components of waste water?

As said earlier waste water has many components that are present in large quantities. A few of them can endanger human health. They are:

• Solids
• Gases
• Organisms
• Pathogens
• Organic matter
• Nutrients
• Solids
• Inorganics
• Oil and Grease

How is waste water treated?

One of the processes used to recycle water is the primary treatment process, here are the steps that are involved in this process.

• Screening is the first step that is conducted when waste water enters the waste water treatment plant. In this step the solid items like rocks, wood and removed.
• The second step is termed as pumping. Waste water treatment plants are located on low ground usually beside a river, in order to release the treated water. In plants that are built above the ground level, waste water has to be pumped up to the aeration tanks after which gravity takes over in moving the waste water through the treatment process.
• The next step in this process is aerating. In this step dissolved gases that taste and smell bad are released from the water. When this happens it uses up oxygen, which is replenished by aeration.
• In the fourth step of this process sludge is removed. At first the sludge settles out of the dishwater and is pumped out of the tanks. In this process some of the water is removed in a step called thickening and then the sludge is processed in large tanks named digesters.
• Now it is scum that needs to be removed. This is done by slow-moving rakes that skim the skim off the scum of the surface of the waste water. Once this happens, scum is thickened and pumped to the digesters along with the sludge.
• That done, it is now the turn of the bacteria which flows into a chlorine contact tank in which the chemical chlorine is added to kill bacteria. Later the chlorine in the water is neutralized by adding other chemicals. The treated water which is also known as effluent is now discharged to a local river or the ocean.