Engineering Problem: Industrial Wastewater Treatment Analysis

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of industrial wastewater treatment, exploring the challenges, uncertainties, and risks associated with the process. It begins by defining industrial wastewater treatment and its importance in environmental protection and resource management, highli...Read More

Running head: INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT
INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT
The waste water treatment in industries is a technique of processing the waste water
which have been contaminated due to certain commercial or industrial activities and disposed
as an undesirable by product by the industries (Patwardhan 2017). The waste water are
generally reused, released to the sewer or over surface water system within the environment
after the treatment (Droste and Gehr 2018). The waste water treatment benefits the
environment by directly discharging the waste water after undergoing a treatment process.
Moreover, it also helps the industries to reuse the treated water in ongoing industrial process
by saving huge cost.
However, there are various engineering problems or challenges in the waste water
treatment. The energy consumption increases due to inadequate and aging infrastructure. It is
estimated that the waste water treatment consume almost about 2 to 3 percent of the total
generated electricity of a developed nation every year, which is approximately 60 tWh
(terawatt hour) (Panepinto et al. 2016). The aging infrastructure which includes the tunnels
pipelines dams, storage, pumping and treatment facilities. These infrastructures draws a huge
amount of electricity due to aging technology and methodology. The infrastructure in such
developed countries results as a serious concern.
Thus updating the infrastructure into biological treatment process have the significant
potential to reduce the demand in the required energy at the treatment plants (Antonie 2018).
Hence, these are just the scope of the asset management within the industries and benefits for
such industries.
There are five proposal which can be made over the regulation of the industrial waste
water treatment. The five proposals are as follows:
i) Proposal 1: Keeping the infrastructure as it is.

2INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT
ii) Proposal 2: Introducing new stringent standards, specifically for certain organics
and pathogens and heavy metals with more strict regulation on its application, sampling and
monitoring of the sludge.
iii) Proposal 3: Introducing the rules and regulation over the application of the sludge
to some crops.
iv) Proposal 4: Banning the use lands for the releasing the waste water
v) Proposal 5: Revoking the instructions and standards regulations annually.
The social, economic and technical impact of the different proposal are listed below:
Proposal Social Impact Economic Impact Technical Impact
Proposal 1 0 0 0
Proposal 2 Increases the
benefits over the
human health form
the reduced
application
Cost of alternative
disposal reduces
New and technically
advanced
machineries are
requires
Proposal 3 The cost of human
health cost decreases
due the adoption of
alternatives routes of
disposal
Changes the
regulation over the
cost implications
The cost increases
due to the adoption
of new
methodologies and
monitoring process
Proposal 4 The unpleasant
odour from the
incarnation and land
filling decreases
The replacement
cost of the fertilizer
increases
Total ban on the
procedures may
portraits a negative
impact from the
technical aspects
Proposal 5 The unpleasant It is benefited from The regulations may

3INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT
odour from the
incarnation and land
filling decreases
which reflects on the
human health
the reduced policy
monitoring
include the regular
serving of the
machineries, which
will increase the life
of the machine
The literature review on waste water treatment discusses about the previous
literature on the subject, sources of the waste characteristics of each type of wastes. The
treatment of waste water has expanded rapidly and adopted universally without affecting the
environment. This minimize the production of the sludge.
The sources and types of the waste can also be originated from the water treatment
plants. The plants produces solids waste along with the drinking water (Cieślik and
Konieczka 2017). The solids wastes generally comes from the filter backwashes and clarifier
basins. These residues are generated from the solids which are derived from the raw water.
The characteristics of the waste is unpredictable which are produced throughout the
process. In 1968 Russelmann discussed about the special characteristics of the waste
coagulation, filter backwashes and screening from the water suppliers (Kupper et al. 2018).
Moreover, Russelmann concluded that the making of generalized sludge production is
impossible in terms of millions gallons of treated water. Hence, the process is called
unpredictable and cannot be pre-determined until the process ends.
The various uncertainties and risks associate with it and the solutions are described
below:
i) Staff: The individual staffs must me trained adequately and certified. The staffs are
on duty for 24 hours a day checks the pipeline leakage along with the electrical valves and
instruments at every instant of time (Papageorgiou, Kosma and Lambropoulou 2016)

4INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT
. The demand is as per the seasonal changes.
This can be solved by enforcing the physical staffs which would be responsible for
monitoring the activities at treatment plants. The operation costs of the waste water treatment
plant can account upto 30% by the operational manager. The OPEX reduction which drives
the emerging technologies are useful towards the benefits of automation which effects in the
reduction of the operation engagement reduction.
ii) Sludge Production: The production of the contaminated waste which are
generated during the treatment of the physical, chemical and biological treatment, this residue
is called sludge (Wang et al. 2016). The excess disposal of sludge exposed during the process
leads to an effective challenge over the environment for waste water treatment produced
during the process.
The solution for the sludge produced during the waste water treatment facilitates
the sustainable functionality. It can be utilized as the useful organic matter and nutrients for
the agriculture.
Therefore, it can be concluded from the above essay that waste water treatment is
very important for the environment as well for the water management policies. The industries
which reuses the waste water can saves a high costs on the aspects of the utilizing the fresh
water. As an effective result it will prevent the release of the waste water over the land, which
destroys its fertility. In order to follow this mythology more significantly modern machineries
and advance management skills are required, in order to cope with the social, economic,
environmental and technical impacts.

5INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT
References:
Antonie, R.L., 2018. Fixed biological surfaces-wastewater treatment: the rotating
biological contactor. CRC press.
Cieślik, B. and Konieczka, P., 2017. A review of phosphorus recovery methods at
various steps of wastewater treatment and sewage sludge management. The concept
of “no solid waste generation” and analytical methods. Journal of Cleaner
Production, 142, pp.1728-1740.
Droste, R.L. and Gehr, R.L., 2018. Theory and practice of water and wastewater
treatment. John Wiley & Sons.
Kupper, T., Bühler, M., Gruber, W. and Häni, C., 2018. Methane and ammonia
emissions from wastewater treatment plants A brief literature review.
Panepinto, D., Fiore, S., Zappone, M., Genon, G. and Meucci, L., 2016. Evaluation of
the energy efficiency of a large wastewater treatment plant in Italy. Applied
Energy, 161, pp.404-411.
Papageorgiou, M., Kosma, C. and Lambropoulou, D., 2016. Seasonal occurrence,
removal, mass loading and environmental risk assessment of 55 pharmaceuticals and
personal care products in a municipal wastewater treatment plant in Central
Greece. Science of the total Environment, 543, pp.547-569.
Patwardhan, A.D., 2017. Industrial wastewater treatment. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd..
Wang, P., Menzies, N.W., Dennis, P.G., Guo, J., Forstner, C., Sekine, R., Lombi, E.,
Kappen, P., Bertsch, P.M. and Kopittke, P.M., 2016. Silver nanoparticles entering
soils via the wastewater–sludge–soil pathway pose low risk to plants but elevated Cl

6INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT
concentrations increase Ag bioavailability. Environmental science &
technology, 50(15), pp.8274-8281.