In order to meet the growing demands of fresh water requirements and combat the environmental impact of hazardous water discharge, the process of wastewater treatment is highly preferred by industries and other parties. The wastewater treatment is a process that is utilized to achieve acceptable water quality goals needed to discharge the “used” water back into the environment.

With appropriate wastewater treatment solutions, industries are able to improve quality of water not just for discharge but for varied specific end-users. The end-user could be drinking, irrigation, industrial water supply, river flow maintenance and much more.

For discharge purposes, the industrial wastewater treatment procedure involves concentration of waste materials then transforming and segregating them for disposal. This discharge is deemed to be safe for the environment post treatment process.

Continue to read till the end to learn about different types of wastewater treatment solutions.

Biological Treatment

Biological wastewater treatment process seems to be simplified on its surface as it is based upon natural processing to decompose organic substances, however, in reality, it is a much more complex process.

It relies on bacteria, nematodes and other minute organisms for breaking down the organic wastes using normal cellular processes. The biological treatment system cultivates microbiological ecosystems for accomplishing microbial digestion of wastes and achieving the desired water quality goals.

Some of the most common biological treatment ecosystems cultivates are –

·       Aerobic Treatment

·       Anaerobic Treatment

·       Anoxic Treatment

There are many more biological treatment systems that are generally categorized as per the type of media utilized for the growth of microbes.

Mechanical Treatment

Mechanical treatment is basically a specialized process to extract solids from water via physical and mechanical means. In general, industries have to invest much less in mechanical treatment when there's a need for removing large particles from the water and the cost goes up if the particle size is smaller.

The extraction or separation of solids from wastewater is achieved in several consecutive steps for getting maximized efficiency and optimized treatment costs. Gravity helps in the solid particles’ separation process.

For improved utilization of gravity, the process of flotation is used. Another mechanical treatment process is filtration where the suspended materials are made to pass through a porous material for capturing the solids while enabling the water to flow through.

Chemical Treatment

Chemical treatment process involves the manipulation of water chemistry to remove or convert the contaminants present in the water. This type of treatment may only target specific chemical reactions and that can be utilized to alter the water properties and its contaminants.

Chemical treatment process is often implemented for improving a natural phenomenon or maximizing efficiency of steps involved in solid separation. pH adjustment is one of the manipulation procedures where the water molecule’s two components – hydrogen and hydroxyl ions are balanced.

Whereas, oxidation is another manipulation treatment where there is transfer of electrons in between two molecules. This is done by adding oxygen to water and creating hydroxyl groups which helps in driving disinfection, odor removal and precipitation of some metals.

There are plenty more chemical treatment applications that help in wastewater treatment.