Wastewater treatment plants help to purify the water and eliminate situations like what is currently seen in developing countries. Unclean water poses significant health risks, accounting for 1.7 million deaths annually, of which over 90 percent are in developing countries. Several water-related diseases, including cholera and schistosomiasis, remain widespread across many developing countries, where only a very small fraction of domestic and urban wastewater is treated prior to its release into the environment. Wastewater Treatment Industries are of great importance which can save ecosystems as well as decrease health risk for living beings.
Unique Challenges Faced By Industry:
Scarcity of Water is well known to all and cannot be emphasized more. But we can state that there is no scarcity of water, only if wastewater is managed and treated properly. The growing concern and environmental norms for Zero Liquid Discharge, Wastewater Pollution is becoming a challenge in the Industry. For all the industries the most concerning issue is treatment of wastewater with recalcitrant CODs which are difficult to break. Till today every water treatment industry is struggling to find the process to deal with wastewater treatment methodologies
Challenge: ZERO LIQUID DISCHARGE
ZLD is an advancement in the wastewater industry. But it has become a challenge to optimize the treatment. With ZLD, it is important to remove minerals to the right concentration, especially when using evaporation or other thermal-related methods of treatment. Adding heat to solutions with an incorrect ratio of total suspended solids (TSS) to total dissolved solids (TDS) can quickly and easily result in corrosion of piping and fouling and/or scaling. As water evaporates, the solids remain concentrated. If they are not properly removed in blow down or prevented in the first place by properly pretreating the wastewater, these solids and hardness begin to build up on heat transfers and other internal piping. This can clog the system and lead to downtime or failure.
Challenge: Aeration
Wastewater aeration is the process of adding air into wastewater to allow aerobic biodegradation of the pollutant components. It is an integral part of most biological wastewater treatment systems. Unlike chemical treatment which uses chemicals to react and stabilize contaminants in the wastewater stream, biological treatment uses microorganisms that occur naturally in wastewater to degrade wastewater contaminants.
In municipal and industrial wastewater treatment, appropriate aeration is the major challenge in the secondary treatment stage. The activated sludge process is the most common option in secondary treatment. Aeration in an activated sludge process is based on pumping air into a tank, which promotes the microbial growth in the wastewater.
Aeration is the most critical component of a treatment system since an improperly designed aeration system has a direct impact on the level of wastewater treatment it achieves. Designing an ample and evenly distributed oxygen supply system in an aeration system is the key to rapid, economically-viable, and effective wastewater treatment.
Challenge: Oil Removal from water
Where water is used extensively at some point along the process, either in machinery, washing process or playing a crucial part in the manufacturing process, problems occur when water mixed up with oil.
Industries as diverse as steel, biodiesel, manufacturing, food processing, trucking service industries, wastewater treatment and utility – all face a simple, common problem: oily water. Regardless of whether the facility reuses the water or sends it to an effluent treatment plant, it has to be removed. Many facilities, however, are not equipped to effectively remove oil from water. When oil is not continuously removed from the surface of the oil/water separator, problems such as oil escaping from the separator chamber, blocking the air to reach the water and growth of anaerobic bacteria, foul odor can have a direct impact on the process output as well as the economics.