Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Wastewater Treatment: How Do They Work?
- Primary Wastewater Treatment. Primary treatment of wastewater involves sedimentation of solid waste within the water. ...
- Secondary Wastewater Treatment. Secondary treatment of wastewater makes use of oxidation to further purify wastewater. ...
- Tertiary Wastewater Treatment. ...
Full Answer
What are the primary stages of sewage treatment?
Apr 08, 2022 · Secondary treatment of wastewater is a process that follows the primary treatment of sewage. Secondary treatment aims to remove the remaining organic matter and suspended solids from the wastewater. The secondary sewage treatment is not as efficient in removing the contaminants as the primary treatment of sewage.
What are the main steps in sewage 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.
What is sewage and how is it treated?
SECONDARY TREATMENT Purpose: •The main purpose of secondary treatment is to remove BOD which does not benefit as much as SS from primary settling. •It is a process which is capable of biodegrading the organic matter into non-polluting end products ,e.g. Water,CO 2 and biomass. 3
What is the process that the sewage treatment goes through?
Oct 16, 2009 · The secondary treatment is designed to remove soluble organics from the wastewater. Secondary treatment consists of a biological process and secondary settling is designed to substantially degrade the biological content of the sewage such as are derived from human waste, food waste, soaps and detergent.
What is primary and secondary sewage treatment?
Primary sewage treatment is a physical process that removes large impurities while secondary sewage treatment is a biological process that removes organic matter of sewage through the action of microbes.
What is secondary treatment?
Secondary treatment removes the soluble organic matter that escapes primary treatment. It also removes more of the suspended solids. Removal is usually accomplished by biological processes in which microbes consume the organic impurities as food, converting them into carbon dioxide, water, and energy…
What is meant by secondary treatment of wastewater?
Secondary treatment is the second step in most waste treatment systems during which bacteria consume the organic parts of the wastes. This is accomplished by bringing the sewage, bacteria and oxygen together in trickling filters or within an activated sludge process.Mar 13, 2003
What is secondary sewage treatment class 12?
Secondary treatment removes the dissolved organic matter by the use of biological agents and hence, known as biological treatment. This is achieved by microbes which can consume and degrade the organic matter converting it to carbon dioxide, water, and energy for their own growth and reproduction.
Which is part of the secondary sewage treatment?
Secondary wastewater treatment processes use microorganisms to biologically remove contaminants from wastewater. Secondary biological processes can be aerobic or anaerobic, each process utilizing a different type of bacterial community.
Which of the following is used in secondary treatment of sewage water?
Secondary sewage treatment is mainly a biological process. In secondary treatment primary effluent is passed into large aeration tanks, where it is constantly agitated mechanically and air is pumped into it. This allows vigorous growth of useful aerobic microbes into floes.
What is the main goal of secondary wastewater treatment?
The objective of secondary treatment is the further treatment of the effluent from primary treatment to remove the residual organics and suspended solids.
What is the purpose of secondary clarifiers?
secondary clarifiers is to separate biological floc from the treated liquid waste stream. Secondary clarifiers are most often discussed in conjunction with suspended growth biological wastewater treatment systems.
Why secondary treatment of sewage is also called biological treatment?
Secondary treatment of wastewater works on a deeper level than primary level. It is called as biological treatment because it is designed to substantially degrade the biological content of the waste through aerobic biological processes. This step removes the dissolved organic matter by the use of biological agents.
Why do we call secondary wastewater treatment as biological treatment?
Secondary waste water treatment is called biological treatment because microorganisms are involved in the breakdown of organic matter in this phase of waste water treatment.Mar 12, 2022
What is sewage treatment sewage 12?
Municipal waste-water which contains large amounts of organic matter is called sewage. Before disposal, hence, sewage is treated in sewage treatment plants (STPs) by the heterotrophic microbes to make it less polluting. Sewage treatment is carried out in two stages.
What is the purpose of sewage treatment?
The purpose of the sewage treatment is to remove the solids present in the sewage. ROLE OF MICROORGANISMS. Microorganisms are unicellular microscopic living things. They multiply by binary division of cells within 10 to 20 minutes. They require oxygen for their respiration.
What is secondary treatment?
The secondary treatment is designed to remove soluble organics from the wastewater. Secondary treatment consists of a biological process and secondary settling is designed to substantially degrade the biological content of the sewage such as are derived from human waste, food waste, soaps and detergent.
What are the objectives of biological treatment?
The overall objectives of the biological treatment of domestic wastewater are: 1 To oxidize or transform dissolved and suspended biodegradable substances into acceptable end products; 2 To capture and incorporate suspended non-settleable colloidal solids into biological floc or bio film, and 3 To transform and remove nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous.
What is suspended growth?
In suspended growth systems the microorganisms responsible for treatment are maintained in liquid suspension by appropriate mixing methods. Typically, suspended growth systems require smaller footprints than fixed film systems for an equivalent capacity. There are a number of biological processes. The most common is activated sludge process in which microbes, also known as biomass, are allowed to feed on organic matter in the wastewater and remain in suspension. The make-up and dynamics of the microbial population is a function of how the ASP is operated.
What is activated sludge?
The activated sludge process (ASP) is an aerobic biological wastewater treatment process that uses microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi, and protozoa, to speed up decomposition of organic matter requiring oxygen for treatment.
What are the end products of decomposition?
The end products of the decomposition are water, CO 2 and Cell tissues. Anaerobic bacteria use oxygen derived from chemical substances for their respiration. They multiply in the absence of DO in the water bodies. They oxidize the organic matter under septic conditions.
What are the two types of biological processes?
TYPES OF BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES. There are two types of biological treatment process; aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic process means that oxygen is present for the microbes for respiration. Anaerobic process means that the process proceeds in the absence of DO.
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 treatment?
Secondary treatment is designed to substantially degrade the biological content of the sewage which are derived from human waste, food waste, soaps and detergent. The majority of municipal plants use aerobic biological processes as a secondary treatment step. To be effective, the biota require both oxygen and food to live.
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 suspended growth?
Suspended-growth systems include activated sludge, which is an aerobic treatment system, based on the maintenance and recirculation of a complex biomass composed of micro-organisms able to absorb and adsorb the organic matter carried in the wastewater. Constructed wetlands are also being used.
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.
What is a trickling filter bed?
In older plants and those receiving variable loadings, trickling filter beds are used where the settled sewage liquor is spread onto the surface of a bed made up of coke (carbonized coal), limestone chips or specially fabricated plastic media. Such media must have large surface areas to support the biofilms that form.
What is a cyclic activated sludge system?
One type of system that combines secondary treatment and settlement is the cyclic activated sludge (CASSBR), or sequencing batch reactor (SBR). Typically, activated sludge is mixed with raw incoming sewage, and then mixed and aerated. The settled sludge is run off and re-aerated before a proportion is returned to the headworks.
What is secondary treatment?
Secondary treatment is a step in wastewater treatment that involves the use of biological processes in order to capture all the dissolved organic materials that were not caught during the initial treatment.
Is wastewater a solid?
Total solids in wastewater can be categorized as inorganic and organic. When it comes to the size, it can be divided into suspended, colloidal and dissolved solids. The main purpose of the initial or primary treatment is to eliminate the suspended solids as much as possible.
