Portal:Wastewater
Portal maintenance status: (October 2018)
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Introduction
Wastewater (or waste water) is any water that has been affected by human use. Wastewater is "used water from any combination of domestic, industrial, commercial or agricultural activities, surface runoff or stormwater, and any sewer inflow or sewer infiltration". Therefore, wastewater is a byproduct of domestic, industrial, commercial or agricultural activities. The characteristics of wastewater vary depending on the source. Types of wastewater include: domestic wastewater from households, municipal wastewater from communities (also called sewage) or industrial wastewater from industrial activities. Wastewater can contain physical, chemical and biological pollutants.
Households may produce wastewater from flush toilets, sinks, dishwashers, washing machines, bath tubs, and showers. Households that use dry toilets produce less wastewater than those that use flush toilets.
Selected general articles
PVC sanitary sewer installation. Sanitary sewers are sized to carry the amount of sewage generated by the collection area. Sanitary sewers are much smaller than combined sewers designed to also carry surface runoff.
A sanitary sewer or foul sewer is an underground pipe or tunnel system for transporting sewage from houses and commercial buildings (but not stormwater) to treatment facilities or disposal. Sanitary sewers are part of an overall system called a sewage system or sewerage.
Sewage may be treated to control water pollution before discharge to surface waters. Sanitary sewers serving industrial areas also carry industrial wastewater. Read more...
Yellow boy in a stream receiving acid drainage from surface coal mining.
Acid mine drainage, acid and metalliferous drainage (AMD), or acid rock drainage (ARD) is the outflow of acidic water from metal mines or coal mines.
Acid rock drainage occurs naturally within some environments as part of the rock weathering process but is exacerbated by large-scale earth disturbances characteristic of mining and other large construction activities, usually within rocks containing an abundance of sulfide minerals. Areas where the earth has been disturbed (e.g. construction sites, subdivisions, and transportation corridors) may create acid rock drainage. In many localities, the liquid that drains from coal stocks, coal handling facilities, coal washeries, and coal waste tips can be highly acidic, and in such cases it is treated as acid rock drainage. This liquid often contains toxic metals, such as copper or iron. These, combined with reduced pH, have a detrimental impact on the streams aquatic environments. Read more...- Water chlorination is the process of adding chlorine or chlorine compounds such as sodium hypochlorite to water. This method is used to kill certain bacteria and other microbes in tap water as chlorine is highly toxic. In particular, chlorination is used to prevent the spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera, dysentery, and typhoid. Read more...
- Membrane bioreactor (MBR) is the combination of a membrane process like microfiltration or ultrafiltration with a biological wastewater treatment process, the activated sludge process. It is now widely used for municipal and industrial wastewater treatment. Read more...
A rotating biological contactor or RBC is a biological treatment process used in the treatment of wastewater following primary treatment. The primary treatment process means protection by removal of grit and sand and coarse material through a screening process, followed by a removal process of sediment by settling. The RBC process involves allowing the wastewater to come in contact with a biological medium in order to remove pollutants in the wastewater before discharge of the treated wastewater to the environment, usually a body of water (river, lake or ocean). A rotating biological contactor is a type of secondary (Biological) treatment process. It consists of a series of closely spaced, parallel discs mounted on a rotating shaft which is supported just above the surface of the waste water. Microorganisms grow on the surface of the discs where biological degradation of the wastewater pollutants takes place. Read more...
Decentralized wastewater systems (also referred to as decentralized wastewater treatment systems) convey, treat and dispose or reuse wastewater from small communities, buildings and dwellings in remote areas, individual public or private properties. Wastewater flow is generated when appropriate water supply is available within the buildings or close to them.
Decentralized wastewater systems treat, reuse or dispose the effluent in relatively close vicinity to its source of generation. They have the purpose to protect public health and the natural environment by reducing substantially health and environmental hazards. Read more...
The Imhoff tank, named for German engineer Karl Imhoff (1876–1965), is a chamber suitable for the reception and processing of sewage. It may be used for the clarification of sewage by simple settling and sedimentation, along with anaerobic digestion of the extracted sludge. It consists of an upper chamber in which sedimentation takes place, from which collected solids slide down inclined bottom slopes to an entrance into a lower chamber in which the sludge is collected and digested. The two chambers are otherwise unconnected, with sewage flowing only through the upper sedimentation chamber and no flow of sewage in the lower digestion chamber. The lower chamber requires separate biogas vents and pipes for the removal of digested sludge, typically after 6-9 months of digestion. The Imhoff tank is in effect a two-story septic tank and retains the septic tank's simplicity while eliminating many of its drawbacks, which largely result from the mixing of fresh sewage and septic sludge in the same chamber.
Imhoff tanks are being superseded in sewage treatment by plain sedimentation tanks using mechanical methods for continuously collecting the sludge, which is moved to separate digestion tanks. This arrangement permits both improved sedimentation results and better temperature control in the digestion process, leading to a more rapid and complete digestion of the sludge. Read more...
An injection well is a device that places fluid deep underground into porous rock formations, such as sandstone or limestone, or into or below the shallow soil layer. The fluid may be water, wastewater, brine (salt water), or water mixed with chemicals. Read more...
Filtration is any of various mechanical, physical or biological operations that separate solids from fluids (liquids or gases) by adding a medium through which only the fluid can pass. The fluid that passes through is called the filtrate. In physical filters oversize solids in the fluid are retained and in biological filters particulates are trapped and ingested and metabolites are retained and removed. However, the separation is not complete; solids will be contaminated with some fluid and filtrate will contain fine particles (depending on the pore size, filter thickness and biological activity). Filtration occurs both in nature and in engineered systems; there are biological, geological, and industrial forms. For example, in animals (including humans), renal filtration removes wastes from the blood, and in water treatment and sewage treatment, undesirable constituents are removed by absorption into a biological film grown on or in the filter medium, as in slow sand filtration. Read more...
A bathroom is a room in the home or hotel for personal hygiene activities, generally containing a sink (basin) and either a bathtub, a shower, or both. It may also contain a toilet. In some countries, the toilet is usually included in the bathroom, whereas other cultures consider this insanitary or impractical, and give that fixture a room of its own. The toilet may even be outside of the home in the case of pit latrines. It may also be a question of available space in the house whether the toilet is included in the bathroom or not.
Historically, bathing was often a collective activity, which took place in public baths. In some countries the shared social aspect of cleansing the body is still important, as for example with sento in Japan and the "Turkish bath" (also known by other names) throughout the Islamic world. Read more...
A vacuum sewer or pneumatic sewer system is a method of transporting sewage from its source to a sewage treatment plant. It maintains a partial vacuum, with an air pressure below atmospheric pressure inside the pipe network and vacuum station collection vessel. Valves open and reseal automatically when the system is used, so differential pressure can be maintained without expending much energy pumping. A single central vacuum station can collect the wastewater of several thousand individual homes, depending on terrain and the local situation.
Vacuum sewers were first installed in Europe in 1882. Dutch engineer Charles Liernur first applied negative pressure drainage to sewers in the second half of the 19th century. Technical implementations of vacuum sewerage systems began in 1959 in Sweden. Until the last 30 years, vacuum sewers were relegated to niche markets, such as trains, airplanes, and flat areas with sandy soils and high ground water tables. Read more...- Total suspended solids (TSS) is the dry-weight of suspended particles, that are not dissolved, in a sample of water that can be trapped by a filter that is analyzed using a filtration apparatus. It is a water quality parameter used to assess the quality of a specimen of any type of water or water body, ocean water for example, or wastewater after treatment in a wastewater treatment plant. It is listed as a conventional pollutant in the U.S. Clean Water Act. Total dissolved solids is another parameter acquired through a separate analysis which is also used to determine water quality based on the total substances that are fully dissolved within the water, rather than undissolved suspended particles.
TSS was previously called non-filterable residue (NFR), but was changed to TSS because of ambiguity in other scientific disciplines. Read more... - Adsorbable Organic Halides (AOX) is a measure of the organic halogen load at a sampling site such as soil from a land fill, water, or sewage waste. The procedure measures chlorine, bromine, and iodine as equivalent halogens, but does not measure fluorine levels in the sample. Read more...
Heavy metals are generally defined as metals with relatively high densities, atomic weights, or atomic numbers. The criteria used, and whether metalloids are included, vary depending on the author and context. In metallurgy, for example, a heavy metal may be defined on the basis of density, whereas in physics the distinguishing criterion might be atomic number, while a chemist would likely be more concerned with chemical behaviour. More specific definitions have been published, but none of these have been widely accepted. The definitions surveyed in this article encompass up to 96 out of the 118 known chemical elements; only mercury, lead and bismuth meet all of them. Despite this lack of agreement, the term (plural or singular) is widely used in science. A density of more than 5 g/cm3 is sometimes quoted as a commonly used criterion and is used in the body of this article.
The earliest known metals—common metals such as iron, copper, and tin, and precious metals such as silver, gold, and platinum—are heavy metals. From 1809 onwards, light metals, such as magnesium, aluminium, and titanium, were discovered, as well as less well-known heavy metals including gallium, thallium, and hafnium. Read more...- Blackwater is used to describe wastewater from toilets, which likely contains pathogens. Blackwater can contain feces, urine, water and toilet paper from flush toilets. Blackwater is distinguished from greywater, which comes from household use other than toilets. Greywater results from washing food, clothing, dishes, as well as from showering or bathing.
Blackwater and greywater are separated in "ecological buildings", such as autonomous buildings. Recreational vehicles often have separate holding tanks for greywater from showers and sinks, and blackwater from the toilet. Read more...
BOD test bottles at the laboratory of a wastewater treatment plant.
Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD, also called Biological Oxygen Demand) is the amount of dissolved oxygen needed (i.e. demanded) by aerobic biological organisms to break down organic material present in a given water sample at certain temperature over a specific time period. The BOD value is most commonly expressed in milligrams of oxygen consumed per litre of sample during 5 days of incubation at 20 °C and is often used as a surrogate of the degree of organic pollution of water.
BOD can be used as a gauge of the effectiveness of wastewater treatment plants. It is listed as a conventional pollutant in the U.S. Clean Water Act. Read more...
Combined sewer system. During dry weather (and small storms), all flows are handled by the publicly owned treatment works (POTW). During large storms, the relief structure allows some of the combined stormwater and sewage to be discharged untreated to an adjacent water body.
A combined sewer is a sewage collection system of pipes and tunnels designed to simultaneously collect surface runoff water in a shared system. This type of gravity sewer design is no longer used in almost every instance worldwide when constructing new sewer systems. Modern-day sewer designs exclude surface runoff from sanitary sewers, but many older cities and towns continue to operate previously constructed combined sewer systems.
Combined sewers can cause serious water pollution problems during combined sewer overflow (CSO) events when combined sewage and surface runoff flows exceed the capacity of the sewage treatment plant, or of the maximum flow rate of the system which transmits the combined sources. In instances where exceptionally high surface runoff occurs (such as large rainstorms), the load on individual tributary branches of the sewer system may cause a back-up to a point where raw sewage flows out of input sources such a toilets, causing inhabited buildings to be flooded with a toxic sewage-runoff mixture, incurring massive financial burdens for cleanup and repair. When combined sewer systems experience these higher than normal throughputs, relief systems cause discharges containing human and industrial waste to flow into rivers, streams, or other bodies of water. Such events frequently cause both negative environmental and lifestyle consequences, including beach closures, contaminated shellfish unsafe for consumption, and contamination of drinking water sources, rendering them temporarily unsafe for drinking and requiring boiling before uses such as bathing or washing dishes. Read more...
A constructed wetland (CW) is an artificial wetland to treat municipal or industrial wastewater, greywater or stormwater runoff. It may also be designed for land reclamation after mining, or as a mitigation step for natural areas lost to land development.
Constructed wetlands are engineered systems that use natural functions vegetation, soil, and organisms to treat wastewater. Depending on the type of wastewater the design of the constructed wetland has to be adjusted accordingly. Constructed wetlands have been used to treat both centralized and on-site wastewater. Primary treatment is recommended when there is a large amount of suspended solids or soluble organic matter (measured as BOD and COD). Read more...
Water cooling is a method of heat removal from components and industrial equipment. Water may be a more efficient heat transfer fluid where air cooling is ineffective. In most occupied climates water offers the thermal conductivity advantages of a liquid with unusually high specific heat capacity and the option of evaporative cooling. Low cost often allows rejection as waste after a single use, but recycling coolant loops may be pressurized to eliminate evaporative loss and offer greater portability and improved cleanliness. Unpressurized recycling coolant loops using evaporative cooling require a blowdown waste stream to remove impurities concentrated by evaporation. Disadvantages of water cooling systems include accelerated corrosion and maintenance requirements to prevent heat transfer reductions from biofouling or scale formation. Chemical additives to reduce these disadvantages may introduce toxicity to wastewater. Water cooling is commonly used for cooling automobile internal combustion engines and large industrial facilities such as steam electric power plants, hydroelectric generators, petroleum refineries and chemical plants. Other uses include cooling the barrels of machine guns, cooling of lubricant oil in pumps; for cooling purposes in heat exchangers; cooling products from tanks or columns, and recently, cooling of various major components inside high-end personal computers such as CPUs, GPUs, and motherboards. The main mechanism for water cooling is convective heat transfer. Read more...
A shale gas well in Pennsylvania
Produced water is a term used in the oil industry to describe water that is produced as a byproduct along with the oil and gas. Oil and gas reservoirs often have water as well as hydrocarbons, sometimes in a zone that lies under the hydrocarbons, and sometimes in the same zone with the oil and gas.
Oil wells sometimes produce large volumes of water with the oil, while gas wells tend to produce water in smaller proportion. Read more...
PVC sanitary sewer installation. Sanitary sewers are sized to carry the amount of sewage generated by the collection area. Sanitary sewers are much smaller than combined sewers designed to also carry surface runoff.
A sanitary sewer or foul sewer is an underground pipe or tunnel system for transporting sewage from houses and commercial buildings (but not stormwater) to treatment facilities or disposal. Sanitary sewers are part of an overall system called a sewage system or sewerage.
Sewage may be treated to control water pollution before discharge to surface waters. Sanitary sewers serving industrial areas also carry industrial wastewater. Read more...
Activated sludge tank at Beckton sewage treatment plant, UK - the white bubbles are due to the diffused air aeration system
The activated sludge process is a type of wastewater treatment process for treating sewage or industrial wastewaters using aeration and a biological floc composed of bacteria and protozoa.
The general arrangement of an activated sludge process for removing carbonaceous pollution includes the following items: An aeration tank where air (or oxygen) is injected in the mixed liquor. This is followed by a settling tank (usually referred to as "final clarifier" or "secondary settling tank") to allow the biological flocs (the sludge blanket) to settle, thus separating the biological sludge from the clear treated water. Read more...
Upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) technology, normally referred to as UASB reactor, is a form of anaerobic digester that is used for wastewater treatment.
The UASB reactor is a methanogenic (methane-producing) digester that evolved from the anaerobic clarigester. A similar but variant technology to UASB is the expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) digester. Read more...- An aerated lagoon (or aerated pond) is a simple wastewater treatment system consisting of a pond with artificial aeration to promote the biological oxidation of wastewaters.
There are many other aerobic biological processes for treatment of wastewaters, for example activated sludge, trickling filters, rotating biological contactors and biofilters. They all have in common the use of oxygen (or air) and microbial action to reduce the pollutants in wastewaters. Read more...
Total dissolved solids (TDS) is a measure of the dissolved combined content of all inorganic and organic substances contained in a liquid in molecular, ionized or micro-granular (colloidal sol) suspended form. Generally the operational definition is that the solids must be small enough to survive filtration through a filter with two-micrometer (nominal size, or smaller) pores. Total dissolved solids are normally discussed only for freshwater systems, as salinity includes some of the ions constituting the definition of TDS. The principal application of TDS is in the study of water quality for streams, rivers and lakes, although TDS is not generally considered a primary pollutant (e.g. it is not deemed to be associated with health effects) it is used as an indication of aesthetic characteristics of drinking water and as an aggregate indicator of the presence of a broad array of chemical contaminants.
Primary sources for TDS in receiving waters are agricultural and residential runoff, clay rich mountain waters, leaching of soil contamination and point source water pollution discharge from industrial or sewage treatment plants. The most common chemical constituents are calcium, phosphates, nitrates, sodium, potassium and chloride, which are found in nutrient runoff, general stormwater runoff and runoff from snowy climates where road de-icing salts are applied. The chemicals may be cations, anions, molecules or agglomerations on the order of one thousand or fewer molecules, so long as a soluble micro-granule is formed. More exotic and harmful elements of TDS are pesticides arising from surface runoff. Certain naturally occurring total dissolved solids arise from the weathering and dissolution of rocks and soils. The United States has established a secondary water quality standard of 500 mg/l to provide for palatability of drinking water. Read more...- A marine outfall is a pipeline or tunnel that discharges municipal or industrial wastewater, stormwater, combined sewer overflows, cooling water, or brine effluents from water desalination plants to the sea. Usually they discharge under the sea's surface (submarine outfall). In the case of municipal wastewater, effluent is often being discharged after having undergone no or only primary treatment, with the intention of using the assimilative capacity of the sea for further treatment. Submarine outfalls are common throughout the world and probably number in the thousands. More than 200 outfalls alone have been listed in a single international database maintained by the Institute for Hydromechanics at Karlsruhe University for the International Association of Hydraulic Engineering and Research (IAHR) / International Water Association (IWA) Committee on Marine Outfall Systems.
The World's first marine outfall was built in Santa Monica, United States, in 1910. In Latin America and the Caribbean there were 134 outfalls with more than 500 m length in 2006 for wastewater disposal alone, according to a survey by the Pan American Center for Sanitary Engineering and Environmental Sciences (CEPIS) of PAHO. According to the survey, the largest number of municipal wastewater outfalls in the region exist in Venezuela (39), Chile (39) and Brazil (22). The World's largest marine outfall is located in Boston, United States.Currently, Boston has approximately 235 miles of combined sewers and 37 active CSO outfalls. Lots of outfalls are simply known by a public used name, e.g. Boston Outfall. Read more...
In chemistry, pH (/piːˈeɪtʃ/) is a logarithmic scale used to specify the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution. It is approximately the negative of the base 10 logarithm of the molar concentration, measured in units of moles per liter, of hydrogen ions. More precisely it is the negative of the base 10 logarithm of the activity of the hydrogen ion. Solutions with a pH less than 7 are acidic and solutions with a pH greater than 7 are basic. Pure water is neutral, at pH 7 (25 °C), being neither an acid nor a base. Contrary to popular belief, the pH value can be less than 0 or greater than 14 for very strong acids and bases respectively.
Measurements of pH are important in agronomy, medicine, chemistry, water treatment, and many other applications. Read more...
A trickling filter plant in the United Kingdom: The effluent from the primary settling tanks is sprayed onto a bed of coarse gravel (Benfleet Sewage Treatment Plant)
A trickling filter is a type of wastewater treatment system. It consists of a fixed bed of rocks, coke, gravel, slag, polyurethane foam, sphagnum peat moss, ceramic, or plastic media over which sewage or other wastewater flows downward and causes a layer of microbial slime (biofilm) to grow, covering the bed of media. Aerobic conditions are maintained by splashing, diffusion, and either by forced-air flowing through the bed or natural convection of air if the filter medium is porous.
The terms trickle filter, trickling biofilter, biofilter, biological filter and biological trickling filter are often used to refer to a trickling filter. These systems have also been described as roughing filters, intermittent filters, packed media bed filters, alternative septic systems, percolating filters, attached growth processes, and fixed film processes. Read more...
A storm drain, storm sewer (U.S. and Canada), surface water drain/sewer (United Kingdom), or stormwater drain (Australia and New Zealand) is infrastructure designed to drain excess rain and ground water from impervious surfaces such as paved streets, car parks, parking lots, footpaths, sidewalks, and roofs. Storm drains vary in design from small residential dry wells to large municipal systems.
Drains receive water from street gutters on most motorways, freeways and other busy roads, as well as towns in areas with heavy rainfall that leads to flooding, and coastal towns with regular storms. Even gutters from houses and buildings can connect to the storm drain. Many storm drainage systems are gravity sewers that drain untreated storm water into rivers or streams—so it is unacceptable to pour hazardous substances into the drains. Read more...
Salinity (/seɪˈlɪnəti/) is the saltiness or amount of salt dissolved in a body of water (see also soil salinity). This is usually measured in(note that this is technically dimensionless). Salinity is an important factor in determining many aspects of the chemistry
of natural waters and of biological processes within it, and is a thermodynamic state variable that, along with temperature and pressure, governs physical characteristics like the density and heat capacity of the water.
A contour line of constant salinity is called an isohaline, or sometimes isohale. Read more...
Irrigation is the application of controlled amounts of water to plants at needed intervals. Irrigation helps to grow agricultural crops, maintain landscapes, and revegetate disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of less than average rainfall. Irrigation also has other uses in crop production, including frost protection, suppressing weed growth in grain fields and preventing soil consolidation. In contrast, agriculture that relies only on direct rainfall is referred to as rain-fed or dry land farming.
Irrigation systems are also used for cooling livestock, dust suppression, disposal of sewage, and in mining. Irrigation is often studied together with drainage, which is the removal of surface and sub-surface water from a given area. Read more...
A septic tank is an underground chamber made of concrete, fiberglass or plastic through which domestic wastewater (sewage) flows for basic treatment. Settling and anaerobic processes reduce solids and organics, but the treatment efficiency is only moderate (referred to as "primary treatment"). Septic tank systems are a type of simple onsite sewage facility (OSSF). They can be used in areas that are not connected to a sewerage system, such as rural areas. The treated liquid effluent is commonly disposed in a septic drain field which provides further treatment. However, groundwater pollution may occur and can be a problem.
The term "septic" refers to the anaerobic bacterial environment that develops in the tank which decomposes or mineralizes the waste discharged into the tank. Septic tanks can be coupled with other onsite wastewater treatment units such as biofilters or aerobic systems involving artificially forced aeration. Read more...- Septage or "septic tank sludge" is partially treated sludge that is accumulated and stored in a septic tank or similar onsite sewage facility. Septage is a by-product from the pretreatment of household wastewater (sewage) in a septic tank. After a few years of accumulation, septage is usually pumped out of a septic tank by a vacuum truck. Septic tanks are receiving blackwater from flush toilets, as well as greywater. This means that septage only contains the kind of solid waste that can be flushed, such as toilet paper. Septage may also include "scum", which is material that floats at the top and contains fats, oil and grease as well as any floating solid waste.
The term "septage" has been used in the United States since at least 1992. It has also been used in projects by the United States Agency for International Development in Asia. Another definition of septage is: "A historical term to define sludge removed from septic tanks." Read more...
A settling basin, settling pond or decant pond is an earthen or concrete structure using sedimentation to remove settleable matter and turbidity from wastewater. The basins are used to control water pollution in diverse industries such as agriculture, aquaculture, and mining. Turbidity is an optical property of water caused by scattering of light by material suspended in that water. Although turbidity often varies directly with weight or volumetric measurements of settleable matter, correlation is complicated by variations in size, shape, refractive index, and specific gravity of suspended matter. Settling ponds may be ineffective at reducing turbidity caused by small particles with specific gravity low enough to be suspended by Brownian motion. Read more...- Reverse osmosis (RO) is a water purification technology that uses a semipermeable membrane to remove ions, molecules and larger particles from drinking water. In reverse osmosis, an applied pressure is used to overcome osmotic pressure, a colligative property, that is driven by chemical potential differences of the solvent, a thermodynamic parameter. Reverse osmosis can remove many types of dissolved and suspended species from water, including bacteria, and is used in both industrial processes and the production of potable water. The result is that the solute is retained on the pressurized side of the membrane and the pure solvent is allowed to pass to the other side. To be "selective", this membrane should not allow large molecules or ions through the pores (holes), but should allow smaller components of the solution (such as solvent molecules) to pass freely.
In the normal osmosis process, the solvent naturally moves from an area of low solute concentration (high water potential), through a membrane, to an area of high solute concentration (low water potential). The driving force for the movement of the solvent is the reduction in the free energy of the system when the difference in solvent concentration on either side of a membrane is reduced, generating osmotic pressure due to the solvent moving into the more concentrated solution. Applying an external pressure to reverse the natural flow of pure solvent, thus, is reverse osmosis. The process is similar to other membrane technology applications. However, key differences are found between reverse osmosis and filtration. The predominant removal mechanism in membrane filtration is straining, or size exclusion, so the process can theoretically achieve perfect efficiency regardless of parameters such as the solution's pressure and concentration. Reverse osmosis also involves diffusion, making the process dependent on pressure, flow rate, and other conditions. Reverse osmosis is most commonly known for its use in drinking water purification from seawater, removing the salt and other effluent materials from the water molecules. Read more...
Quantitatively, the material balance around a wet, evaporative cooling tower system is governed by the operational variables of make-up volumetric flow rate, evaporation and windage losses, draw-off rate, and the concentration cycles.
In the adjacent diagram, water pumped from the tower basin is the cooling water routed through the process coolers and condensers in an industrial facility. The cool water absorbs heat from the hot process streams which need to be cooled or condensed, and the absorbed heat warms the circulating water (C). The warm water returns to the top of the cooling tower and trickles downward over the fill material inside the tower. As it trickles down, it contacts ambient air rising up through the tower either by natural draft or by forced draft using large fans in the tower. That contact causes a small amount of the water to be lost as windage/drift (W) and some of the water (E) to evaporate. The heat required to evaporate the water is derived from the water itself, which cools the water back to the original basin water temperature and the water is then ready to recirculate. The evaporated water leaves its dissolved salts behind in the bulk of the water which has not been evaporated, thus raising the salt concentration in the circulating cooling water. To prevent the salt concentration of the water from becoming too high, a portion of the water is drawn off/blown down (D) for disposal. Fresh water make-up (M) is supplied to the tower basin to compensate for the loss of evaporated water, the windage loss water and the draw-off water. Read more...
Ballast water discharges by ships can have a negative impact on the marine environment. The discharge of ballast water and sediments by ships is governed globally under the Ballast Water Management Convention, since its entry into force in September 2017. It is also controlled through national regulations, which may be separate from the Convention, such as in the United States.
Cruise ships, large tankers, and bulk cargo carriers use a huge amount of ballast water, which is often taken on in the coastal waters in one region after ships discharge wastewater or unload cargo, and discharged at the next port of call, wherever more cargo is loaded. Ballast water discharge typically contains a variety of biological materials, including plants, animals, viruses, and bacteria. These materials often include non-native, nuisance, exotic species that can cause extensive ecological and economic damage to aquatic ecosystems, along with serious human health issues including death. Read more...
Fecal sludge management (FSM) (or faecal sludge management in British English) is the collection, transport, and treatment of fecal sludge from pit latrines, septic tanks or other onsite sanitation systems. Fecal sludge is a mixture of human excreta, water and solid wastes (e.g. toilet paper or other anal cleansing materials, menstrual hygiene materials) that are disposed in pits, tanks or vaults of onsite sanitation systems. Fecal sludge that is removed from septic tanks is called septage.
FSM is necessary in densely populated areas where a proportion of population is not connected to a sewerage network, and the covering and rebuilding pit latrines is not possible. This is the case in most urban areas of developing countries, but such services are also used in developed countries where sewerage systems are unavailable. FSM services are usually provided by formal and informal private sector services providers, local governments, water authorities and utilities. However, in many developing countries FSM services are often unavailable or if they are available are often informal, unregulated, unhygienic and unsafe. This can lead to surface water and groundwater pollution, spreading of pathogens into the environment and adverse public health impacts. It can also result in unreliable services with relatively high costs to the households which need them. Read more...- A low-pressure mercury-vapor discharge tube floods the inside of a biosafety cabinet with shortwave UV light when not in use, sterilizing microbiological contaminants from irradiated surfaces.
Ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) is a disinfection method that uses short-wavelength ultraviolet (UV-C) light to kill or inactivate microorganisms by destroying nucleic acids and disrupting their DNA, leaving them unable to perform vital cellular functions. UVGI is used in a variety of applications, such as food, air, and water purification.
UV-C light is weak at the Earth's surface as the ozone layer of the atmosphere blocks it. UVGI devices can produce strong enough UV-C light in circulating air or water systems to make them inhospitable environments to microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, molds and other pathogens. UVGI can be coupled with a filtration system to sanitize air and water. Read more...
Left: Greywater sample from an office building. Right: Same greywater after treatment in membrane bioreactor
Greywater (also spelled graywater, grey water and gray water) or sullage is all wastewater generated in households or office buildings from streams without fecal contamination, i.e. all streams except for the wastewater from toilets. Sources of greywater include, sinks, showers, baths, clothes washing machines or dish washers. As greywater contains fewer pathogens than domestic wastewater, it is generally safer to handle and easier to treat and reuse onsite for toilet flushing, landscape or crop irrigation, and other non-potable uses.
The application of greywater reuse in urban water systems provides substantial benefits for both the water supply subsystem by reducing the demand for fresh clean water as well as the wastewater subsystems by reducing the amount of wastewater required to be conveyed and treated. Treated greywater has many uses, for example toilet flushing or irrigation. Read more...- Infiltration/Inflow (I/I) causes dilution in sanitary sewers. Dilution of sewage decreases the efficiency of treatment, and may cause sewage volumes to exceed design capacity. Although inflow is technically different from infiltration, it may be difficult to determine which is causing dilution problems in inaccessible sewers. The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines the term infiltration/inflow as combined contributions from both. Read more...
Sewage (or domestic wastewater or municipal wastewater) is a type of wastewater that is produced by a community of people. It is characterized by volume or rate of flow, physical condition, chemical and toxic constituents, and its bacteriologic status (which organisms it contains and in what quantities). It consists mostly of greywater (from sinks, tubs, showers, dishwashers, and clothes washers), blackwater (the water used to flush toilets, combined with the human waste that it flushes away); soaps and detergents; and toilet paper (less so in regions where bidets are widely used instead of paper).
Sewage usually travels from a building's plumbing either into a sewer, which will carry it elsewhere, or into an onsite sewage facility (of which there are many kinds). Whether it is combined with surface runoff in the sewer depends on the sewer design (sanitary sewer or combined sewer). The reality is, however, that most wastewater produced globally remains untreated causing widespread water pollution, especially in low-income countries: A global estimate by UNDP and UN-Habitat is that 90% of all wastewater generated is released into the environment untreated. In many developing countries the bulk of domestic and industrial wastewater is discharged without any treatment or after primary treatment only. Read more...
Sewage farms use sewage for irrigation and fertilizing agricultural land. The practice is common in warm, arid climates where irrigation is valuable while sources of fresh water are scarce. Suspended solids may be converted to humus by microbes and bacteria in order to supply nitrogen, phosphorus and other plant nutrients for crop growth.
Many industrialized nations have implemented conventional sewage treatment to reduce vector and odor problems for water reclamation and use of biosolids; but sewage farming remains an option for developing countries. Read more...- Sedimentation is a physical water treatment process using gravity to remove suspended solids from water. Solid particles entrained by the turbulence of moving water may be removed naturally by sedimentation in the still water of lakes and oceans. Settling basins are ponds constructed for the purpose of removing entrained solids by sedimentation. Clarifiers are tanks built with mechanical means for continuous removal of solids being deposited by sedimentation. Clarification does not removed dissolved species. Read more...
Oxygen saturation (symbol SO2) is a relative measure of the concentration of oxygen that is dissolved or carried in a given medium as a proportion of the maximal concentration that can be dissolved in that medium. It can be measured with a dissolved oxygen probe such as an oxygen sensor or an optode in liquid media, usually water. The standard unit of oxygen saturation is percent (%).
Oxygen saturation can be measured regionally and noninvasively. Arterial oxygen saturation (SaO2) is commonly measured using pulse oximetry. Tissue saturation at peripheral scale can be measured using NIRS. This technique can be applied on both muscle and brain. Read more...- The coliform index is a rating of the purity of water based on a count of fecal bacteria. It is one of many tests done to assure sufficient water quality. Coliform bacteria are microorganisms that primarily originate in the intestines of warm-blooded animals. By testing for coliforms, especially the well known Escherichia coli (E. coli), which is a thermotolerant coliform, one can determine if the water has possibly been exposed to fecal contamination; that is, whether it has come in contact with human or animal feces. It is important to know this because many disease-causing organisms are transferred from human and animal feces to water, from where they can be ingested by people and infect them. Water that has been contaminated by feces usually contains pathogenic bacteria, which can cause disease. Some types of coliforms cause disease, but the coliform index is primarily used to judge if other types of pathogenic bacteria are likely to be present in the water.
The coliform index is used because it is difficult to test for pathogenic bacteria directly. There are many different types of disease-causing bacteria, and they are usually present in low numbers which do not always show up in tests. Thermotolerant coliforms are present in higher numbers than individual types of pathogenic bacteria and they can be tested relatively easily. Read more... - Sewage treatment plant in Massachusetts, USA
Sewage treatment is the process of removing contaminants from municipal wastewater, containing mainly household sewage plus some industrial wastewater. Physical, chemical, and biological processes are used to remove contaminants and produce treated wastewater (or treated effluent) that is safe enough for release into the environment. A by-product of sewage treatment is a semi-solid waste or slurry, called sewage sludge. The sludge has to undergo further treatment before being suitable for disposal or application to land.
Sewage treatment may also be referred to as wastewater treatment. However, the latter is a broader term which can also refer to industrial wastewater. For most cities, the sewer system will also carry a proportion of industrial effluent to the sewage treatment plant which has usually received pre-treatment at the factories themselves to reduce the pollutant load. If the sewer system is a combined sewer then it will also carry urban runoff (stormwater) to the sewage treatment plant. Sewage water can travel towards treatment plants via piping and in a flow aided by gravity and pumps. The first part of filtration of sewage typically includes a bar screen to filter solids and large objects which are then collected in dumpsters and disposed of in landfills. Fat and grease is also removed before the primary treatment of sewage. Read more...
Did you know...
- ... that a 1909 report deemed that the discharge of sewage into Zerbe Run did not pose a threat to public health?
- ... that the Eurasian bittern may visit reedbeds, rice fields, watercress beds, fish farms, gravel pits, sewage works, ditches, flooded areas and marshes?
- ... that Stanwood, Washington, was formed by the consolidation of two rival towns in order to fund a modern sewage treatment system?
- ... that sewage from Canon de los Laureles flows into the United States?
- ... that the São Vicente Suspension Bridge, constructed 1911–1914, was one of the first suspension bridges in Brazil, and was originally conceived to carry a sewage pipeline?
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Greywater (a type of wastewater) in a settling tank
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