Sewage treatment is the process of removing contaminants from wastewater, primarily from household sewage. It includes physical, chemical, and biological processes to remove these contaminants and produce environmentally safe treated wastewater (or treated effluent). A by-product of sewage treatment is usually a semi-solid waste or slurry, called sewage sludge, that has to undergo further treatment before being suitable for disposal or land application.
Sewage treatment may also be referred to as wastewater treatment, although the latter is a broader term which can also be applied to purely industrial wastewater. For most cities, the sewer system will also carry a proportion of industrial effluent to the sewage treatment plant which has usually received pretreatment at the factories themselves to reduce the pollutant load. If the sewer system is a combined sewer then it will also carry urban runoff (stormwater) to the sewage treatment plant.
The term "sewage treatment plant" (or "sewage treatment works" in some countries) is nowadays often replaced with the term "wastewater treatment plant".
Davyhulme Sewage Works is the main waste water treatment works for the city of Manchester, England, and one of the largest in Europe. It was opened in 1894, and has pioneered the improvement of treatment processes.
With the growth of population in the late nineteenth century, and the proliferation of water closets, the rivers around Manchester were becoming grossly polluted, and the City of Manchester decided to build two deep level sewers to intercept existing sewers. When the first one reached Davyhulme, further extension was blocked by the Manchester Ship Canal, and so a treatment works was built there. The works used precipitation tanks, and a 3 ft (914 mm) gauge tramway was built, to facilitate the movement of materials around the site. The first steam locomotive was acquired in 1897, and a further fourteen steam and two diesel locomotives operated on the system before its closure in 1958.
Treated sludge was loaded into ships and discharged into the Mersey estuary from 1898. Over the next hundred years, seven ships were used to transport the sludge, including one borrowed from Glasgow after another hit a mine and sank. At first, ships used the ship canal to transport sludge from the works, but later a pipeline was built to Liverpool, and the ships made a much shorter journey.
Coordinates: 53°27′21″N 2°22′06″W / 53.455881°N 2.368252°W
Davyhulme is an area of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. Historically in Lancashire, it is contiguous with the town of Urmston. The population of the 2 Trafford Wards at the 2011 census was 19,634.
The area is notable for Davyhulme Sewage Works, one of the largest wastewater treatment plants in Europe. Opened in 1894, the site is operated by United Utilities and serves a population of 1.2 million in and around the city of Manchester. The facility includes a biogas combined heat and power facility, producing renewable energy from gas produced by the anaerobic digestion of sewage.
Also known as Davyhulme Millennium Nature Reserve, the area set along the Manchester Ship Canal is popular with dog walkers and children on bicycles. The area is owned by United Utilities, and was managed by a warden when first opened to the public. It is notable for being one of the few places in the area not owned by Peel Holdings.
Davyhulme was a parliamentary constituency in the Davyhulme suburb of Greater Manchester. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1983 until it was abolished for the 1997 general election.
Its territory was then mostly incorporated into the new Stretford and Urmston constituency.
The Metropolitan Borough of Trafford wards of Bucklow, Davyhulme East, Davyhulme West, Flixton, Mersey St Mary's, Priory, St Martin's, and Urmston.