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Wastewater Treatment
Technology Tutorial
Introduction
Earthpace has developed this tutorial
to guide users through the wastewater treatment process
and to introduce users to current and emerging technologies
for wastewater management.
Begin the tutorial by reading
the introduction
or by clicking on one of the blue
titles in the image below to learn more about
each wastewater treatment method. You may also use the
links to the right to navigate.
Wastewater
treatment refers to the process of removing pollutants
from water previously employed for industrial, agricultural,
or municipal uses. The techniques used to remove the
pollutants present in wastewater can be broken into
biological, chemical, physical, and energetic. These
different techniques are applied through the many
stages of wastewater treatment.
Primary
treatment usually includes the removal of large
solids from the wastewater via physical settling or
filtration. The first step in primary treatment is screening.
Secondary
treatment typically removes the smaller solids and
particles remaining in the wastewater through fine filtration
aided by the use of membranes or through the use of
microbes, which utilize organics as an energy source.
Energetic techniques may also be employed in tandem
with biological techniques in the secondary phase to
break up the size of particles thus increasing their
surface area and rate of consumption by the microbes
present. A common first step in the secondary treatment
process is to send the waste to an aeration
tank.
Tertiary treatment involves
the disinfection of the wastewater through chemical
or energetic means. Increasing the number of steps in
a wastewater treatment process may insure higher quality
of effluent; however employing additional technologies
may incur increased costs of construction, operation,
and maintenance.
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