
What is a secondary treatment?
A treatment process for wastewater or sewage. Secondary treatment is a treatment process for wastewater (or sewage) to achieve a certain degree of effluent quality by using a sewage treatment plant with physical phase separation to remove settleable solids and a biological process to remove dissolved and suspended organic compounds.
What is the final step in the secondary treatment process?
The final step in the secondary treatment stage is to settle out the biological floc or filter material in a secondary sedimentation tank (SST) or secondary clarifier and produce sewage water containing very low levels of organic material and suspended matter
What is the difference between primary and secondary waste treatment?
In the primary method, the waste processes through a physical procedure with equipment and filtration. While secondary treatment may use similar items, this method uses biological treatment through microbes.
What is secondary sewage treatment?
Secondary treatment is a treatment process for wastewater (or sewage) to achieve a certain degree of effluent quality by using a sewage treatment plant with physical phase separation to remove settleable solids and a biological process to remove dissolved and suspended organic compounds.

What is removed during secondary wastewater treatment?
Secondary Treatment The secondary stage of treatment removes about 85 percent of the organic matter in sewage by making use of the bacteria in it. The principal secondary treatment techniques used in secondary treatment are the trickling filter and the activated sludge process.
What is a secondary treatment system?
Secondary treatment system is a wastewater treatment system which produces treated wastewater of secondary standard, i.e. 20 mg/L of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), 30 mg/L of Total suspended solids (TSS) and 10 cfu/100 mL of Escherichia (E) coli.
What is the main goal of secondary treatment?
The main objective of secondary treatment: To remove most of the fine suspended and dissolved degradable organic matter that remains after primary treatment, so that the effluent may be rendered suitable for discharge.
What does primary treatment remove?
The purpose of primary treatment is to settle material by gravity, removing floatable objects,and reducing the pollution to ease secondary treatment. Primary Treatment aims to reduce the Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Total Suspended Solids (TSS) in the wastewater.
What is removed during tertiary wastewater treatment?
Tertiary water treatment is the final stage of the multi-stage wastewater cleaning process. This third stage of treatment removes inorganic compounds, bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Removing these harmful substances makes the treated water safe to reuse, recycle, or release into the environment.
Which treatment removes suspended solids?
Explanation: Suspended particles can be removed by sequential filtration, which is included in the primary treatment.
What is done during second stage of primary treatment?
Answer: Secondary Wastewater treatment is the second stage of wastewater treatment. In primary treatment, suspended solids, colloidal particles, oil, and grease are removed. In secondary treatment, biological treatment is done on the wastewater to remove the organic matter present.
What materials Cannot be removed from wastewater?
When wastewater arrives at the treatment plant, it contains many solids that cannot be removed by the wastewater treatment process. This can include rags, paper, wood, food particles, egg shells, plastic, and even toys and money.
How does BOD affect the ecosystem?
High BOD concentrations initially exceed the ability of the secondary treatment ecosystem to utilize available food. Ecosystem populations of aerobic organisms increase until oxygen transfer limitations of the secondary treatment bioreactor are reached. Secondary treatment ecosystem populations may shift toward species with lower oxygen requirements, but failure of those species to use some food sources may produce higher effluent BOD concentrations. More extreme increases in BOD concentrations may drop oxygen concentrations before the secondary treatment ecosystem population can adjust, and cause an abrupt population decrease among important species. Normal BOD removal efficiency will not be restored until populations of aerobic species recover after oxygen concentrations rise to normal.
How does an aerated lagoon work?
Aerated lagoons are a low technology suspended-growth method of secondary treatment using motor-driven aerators floating on the water surface to increase atmospheric oxygen transfer to the lagoon and to mix the lagoon contents. The floating surface aerators are typically rated to deliver the amount of air equivalent to 1.8 to 2.7 kg O 2 / kW·h. Aerated lagoons provide less effective mixing than conventional activated sludge systems and do not achieve the same performance level. The basins may range in depth from 1.5 to 5.0 metres. Surface-aerated basins achieve 80 to 90 percent removal of BOD with retention times of 1 to 10 days. Many small municipal sewage systems in the United States (1 million gal./day or less) use aerated lagoons.
How much BOD is in secondary treated sewage?
Secondary treated sewage is expected to produce effluent with a monthly average of less than 30 mg/l BOD and less than 30 mg/l suspended solids. Weekly averages may be up to 50 percent higher.
What is fixed film system?
Fixed-film systems are more able to cope with drastic changes in the amount of biological material and can provide higher removal rates for organic material and suspended solids than suspended growth systems . : 11–13 Most of the aerobic secondary treatment systems include a secondary clarifier to settle out and separate biological floc or filter material grown in the secondary treatment bioreactor.
Why does BOD drop in secondary bioreactors?
A similar problem occurs as BOD concentrations drop when low flow increases waste residence time within the secondary treatment bioreactor. Secondary treatment ecosystems of college communities acclimated to waste loading fluctuations from student work/sleep cycles may have difficulty surviving school vacations. Secondary treatment systems accustomed to routine production cycles of industrial facilities may have difficulty surviving industrial plant shutdown. Populations of species feeding on incoming waste initially decline as concentration of those food sources decrease. Population decline continues as ecosystem predator populations compete for a declining population of lower trophic level organisms.
How is primary clarifier effluent discharged?
Primary clarifier effluent was discharged directly to eutrophic natural wetlands for decades before environmental regulations discouraged the practice. Where adequate land is available, stabilization ponds with constructed wetland ecosystems can be built to perform secondary treatment separated from the natural wetlands receiving secondary treated sewage. Constructed wetlands resemble fixed-film systems more than suspended growth systems, because natural mixing is minimal. Constructed wetland design uses plug flow assumptions to compute the residence time required for treatment. Patterns of vegetation growth and solids deposition in wetland ecosystems, however, can create preferential flow pathways which may reduce average residence time. Measurement of wetland treatment efficiency is complicated because most traditional water quality measurements cannot differentiate between sewage pollutants and biological productivity of the wetland. Demonstration of treatment efficiency may require more expensive analyses.
What is primary treatment of sewage?
Primary treatment of sewage by quiescent settling allows separation of floating material and heavy solids from liquid waste. The remaining liquid usually contains less than half of the original solids content and approximately two-thirds of the BOD in the form of colloids and dissolved organic compounds.
What is secondary wastewater treatment?
Secondary Wastewater treatment is the second stage of wastewater treatment. In primary treatment, suspended solids, colloidal particles, oil, and grease are removed. In secondary treatment, biological treatment is done on the wastewater to remove the organic matter present. This treatment is performed by indigenous and aquatic micro-organisms like ...
What is the process that uses oxygen to break down organic matter and remove other pollutants?
These processes are sensitive to temperature and with an increase in temperature, the rate of biological reactions increases. 1. Aerobic Treatment: Aerobic wastewater treatment is a biological treatment that uses oxygen to break down organic matter and remove other pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorus.
What is SBR treatment?
It is used to reduce the organic matter (BOD and COD), oxygen is bubbled with a mixture of wastewater and activated sludge. After this treatment, the treated water can be discharged on surface water.
Why is the sludge digestion operation rendered simple?
However, the operation is rendered simple due to the elimination of primary settling and separate sludge digestion.
What is a membrane bioreactor?
Membrane Bioreactor – MBR is the combination of ultrafiltration (UF) and activated sludge process. MBR produces effluent of high quality which can be discharged to surface water for reuse. It can be retrofitted in existing installations.
What conditions are needed for denitrification?
In order for denitrification to occur, anoxic conditions must exist. Anoxic conditions are deficient in dissolved molecular oxygen but it can contain chemically-bound oxygen as found in nitrate
What is the scheme of the Extended Aeration process and its mixing regime similar to?
The scheme of the Extended Aeration process and its mixing regime are similar to that of the completely mixed process.
What is considered preliminary treatment?
Preliminary Treatment: Physical. When wastewater arrives at the treatment plant, it contains many solids that cannot be removed by the wastewater treatment process. This can include rags, paper, wood, food particles, egg shells, plastic, and even toys and money.
What happens when wastewater enters the secondary clarifier?
When the wastewater enters the two Secondary Clarifiers, it still contains lots of microorganisms from the Aeration Basins and looks brown and murky. The Secondary Clarifiers are identical to the Primary Clarifiers; materials in the wastewater sink and float and rotating arms remove this material from the water.
How long does it take for wastewater to leave the aeration basin?
When all of the food (waste) is gone, after about eight hours, the wastewater leaves the Aeration Basins.
How much water does a secondary clarifier hold?
The Secondary Clarifiers each hold 800,000 gallons of water.
How many primary clarifiers are there at Soscol?
Large paddles rotate slowly over the surface and floor of the Primary Clarifier, removing these materials from the wastewater. There are two Primary Clarifiers at Soscol Water Recycling Facility. The clarifiers are covered to reduce odors!
What is the process of aeration of wastewater?
From the Primary Clarifiers, the wastewater flows into large, rectangular tanks called Aeration Basins, where a biological treatment called the “activated sludge process” occurs. The wastewater flows slowing through a series of chambers as large volumes of air are bubbled up through the water. There is so much air added that it looks as if the water is boiling. In these basins, the wastewater is mixed with the “activated sludge;” hundreds of millions of actively growing single-celled microorganisms (mostly bacteria and protozoa) referred to as “bugs.”
How is primary treatment different from secondary treatment?
Another difference between these processes is how much time they take to complete. The primary treatment takes a shorter period to finish, but the secondary takes much longer as organic microbes consume the waste.
What is the difference between primary and secondary treatment?
The principal difference in primary and secondary treatment is the process that breaks down the sewage in wastewater. In the primary method, the waste processes through a physical procedure with equipment and filtration. While secondary treatment may use similar items, this method uses biological treatment through microbes.
What is secondary treatment of wastewater?
Secondary treatment of wastewater further purifies the wastewater through additional processes. The first is biofiltration that uses filters with sand, contact filters or trickling filters that remove sediment from the sewage.
What is primary wastewater treatment?
The primary wastewater process utilizes equipment to break up larger particles and then uses sedimentation or a floating process for extraction. Many treatments that use the primary method then proceed to the secondary treatment process.
What is the process of removing impurities from water?
The removal in the secondary wastewater treatment process generally occurs through a biological process with consumption of impurities in water by microbes, converting the matter into energy, carbon dioxide gases, and water. AOS can help with municipal wastewater treatment services in both primary and secondary processes.
What is the process of removing large particles from wastewater?
The initial and primary water treatment process removes large matter from wastewater while the secondary treatment will remove smaller particles already dissolved or suspended. Sedimentation and filtration are the processes involved in the primary treatment method while biological breakdown occurs through aerobic or anaerobic units in secondary processes.
What is primary treatment?
Through the primary treatment, it is possible to remove materials that float and settle on top of water. Through primary treatment, it is possible to implement screening water treatment, reduce particles to fragments, remove grit and initiate sedimentation. The primary treatment pushes sewage through screens into the comminutor for grip disposal ...
