Domestic Waste Water (Sewage):

Collection, Treatment & Disposal

 Types of collection system
• Sanitary sewers
• Storm water sewers
• Combined sewers
Types of sewers:
– Building sewer/Building connections: Connected to the building and
used for conveyance of wastewater from building to lateral/branch
sewer.
– Lateral or branch: Usually laid out on streets and used to collect the
wastewater from one or more buildings.
– Main: Convey wastewater from one of more lateral sewers to trunk
sewers or to intercepting sewer.
– Trunk: Large sewers used to convey wastewater from main sewer to
treatment or other disposal facilities or to large intercepting sewers
– Intercepting: Large sewers that are used to intercept a number of
main or trunk sewer and convey wastewater to treatment or other
disposal facilities
Sewage Treatment Plant (STP)
 Wastewater treatment: Unit Operations/Processes, Their Functions and
Units Used for Domestic Wastewater Treatment

Phase of treatment Unit Operations/Processes Functions Treatment Devices

Screening Removal of large floating, Bar racks and screens of
Preliminary treatment suspended and settleable solids various description
Grit Removal Removal of inorganic Grit chamber
Primary treatment suspended solids
Primary Sedimentation Removal of organic/inorganic Primary sedimentation tank
settleable solids
Secondary/Biological Aerobic Biological Suspended Conversion of colloidal, Activated sludge process units
treatment Growth Process dissolved and residual and its modifications, Waste
suspended organic matter into stabilisation ponds, Aerated
settleable biofloc and stable lagoons
inorganics
Aerobic Biological Attached same as above Trickling filter, Rotating
Growth Process biological contactor
Anaerobic biological growth Conversion of organic matter Anaerobic filter, Fluid bed
processes into CH4 & CO2 and relatively submerged media anaerobic
stable organic residue reactor, Upflow anaerobic
sludge blanket reactor,
Anaerobic rotating biological
contactor
Anaerobic Stabilization of same as above Anaerobic digestor
Organic Sludges
Nitrification-denitrification
Advanced treatment
 Preliminary wastewater treatment
Screening
• A screen is a device with openings for removing bigger suspended
or floating matter in sewage which would otherwise damage
equipment or interfere with satisfactory operation of treatment
units.
1. Coarse Screens: Coarse screens also called racks, are usually bar
screens, composed of vertical or inclined bars spaced at equal
intervals across a channel through which sewage flows. Bar
screens with relatively large openings of 75 to 150 mm are
provided ahead of pumps, while those ahead of sedimentation
tanks have smaller openings of 50 mm. Bar screens are usually
3. Fine Screens: Fine screens are hand cleaned and sometimes provided with mechanical devices.
mechanically cleaned devices using These cleaning devices are rakes which periodically sweep the
perforated plates, woven wire cloth entire screen removing the solids for further processing or
or very closely spaced bars with clear disposal. Hand cleaned racks are set usually at an angle of 45° to
openings of less than 20 mm. Fine the horizontal to increase the effective cleaning surface and also
screens are not normally suitable for facilitate the raking operations. Mechanical cleaned racks are
sewage because of clogging generally erected almost vertically. Such bar screens have
possibilities. openings 25% in excess of the cross section of the sewage
channel.
2. Medium Screens: Medium screens have clear openings of 20 to
50 mm. Bar are usually 10 mm thick on the upstream side and
taper slightly to the downstream side. The bars used for screens
are rectangular in cross section usually about 10 x 50 mm,
placed with larger dimension parallel to the flow.
 Grit Chamber
• Grit Chambers
• Grit chambers are basin to remove the inorganic particles to prevent damage to the pumps, and to
prevent their accumulation in sludge digestors.
• Types of Grit Chambers
Grit chambers are of two types: mechanically cleaned and manually cleaned. In mechanically
cleaned grit chamber, scraper blades collect the grit settled on the floor of the grit chamber. The grit
so collected is elevated to the ground level by several mechanisms such as bucket elevators, jet
pump and air lift. The grit washing mechanisms are also of several designs most of which are
agitation devices using either water or air to produce washing action. Manually cleaned grit
chambers should be cleaned atleast once a week. The simplest method of cleaning is by means of
shovel.
• Aerated Grit Chamber
• An aerated grit chamber consists of a standard spiral flow aeration tank provided with air diffusion
tubes placed on one side of the tank. The grit particles tend to settle down to the bottom of the
tank at rates dependant upon the particle size and the bottom velocity of roll of the spiral flow,
which in turn depends on the rate of air diffusion through diffuser tubes and shape of aeration tank.
The heavier particles settle down whereas the lighter organic particles are carried with roll of the
spiral motion.
 Primary Sedimentation

• Primary Sedimentation
• Primary sedimentation in a municipal wastewater treatment plant is generally plain
sedimentation without the use of chemicals. In treating certain industrial wastes chemically
aided sedimentation may be involved. In either case, it constitutes flocculent settling, and
the particles do not remain discrete as in the case of grit, but tend to agglomerate or
coagulate during settling. Thus, their diameter keeps increasing and settlement proceeds at
an over increasing velocity.
• The settling tank design in such cases depends on both surface loading and detention time.
• Industrial wastewater: Long tube settling tests can be performed in order to estimate
specific value of surface loading and detention time for desired efficiency of clarification for a
given industrial wastewater using recommended methods of testing. Scale-up factors used in
this case range from 1.25 to 1.75 for the overflow rate, and from 1.5 to 2.0 for detention time
when converting laboratory results to the prototype design.
• Municipal or domestic sewage: For primary settling tanks treating municipal or domestic
sewage, laboratory tests are generally not necessary, and recommended design values given
in table may be used. Using an appropriate value of surface loading from table, the required
tank area is computed. Knowing the average depth, the detention time is then computed.
Excessively high detention time (longer than 2.5 h) must be avoided especially in warm
climates where anaerobicity can be quickly induced.
Primary Settling Tank (Clarifier)
 Biological processes for waste water treatment-II
ACTIVATED SLUDGE PROCESS

Clarifier
Plug flow aeration tank
Influent Effluent

Air
Return activated sludge
Sludge
 Biological processes for waste water treatment-II
• Attached growth process (AGP): The microorganisms responsible for the
conversion of organic matter or nutrients are attached to an inert packing
material (i.e. rock, gravel, slag, sand, redwood and wide range of plastic
and other synthetic materials). The wastewater is passed through the
attached growth also known as biofilm. The AGP could be aerobic or
anaerobic. The packing material can be submerged or not submerged,
with an air or gas space above the biofilm.
• Most common attached growth process used is the trickling filter.

Clarifier
Influent Trickling Effluent
filter with
rock packing

Recycle (optional)
Sludge
 Rotating Biological Contactor
Conventional RBC Schematic
 SEQUENCING BATCH REACTOR (SBR)
• SBR is a reactor that combines all treatment steps and processes into a single
basin, or tank compared to conventional facilities which use multiple basins.
• SBR STEPS:

Filling

Decantation React

Settling
 Biological treatment and role of
microorganism
• Objective of biological treatment:
– Oxidize dissolved and particulate biodegradable constituents into acceptable
end product (CO2, H2O,)
– Capture and incorporate suspended and nonsettlable colloidal solids into a
biological floc or biofilm
– Transform and remove nutrients such as N2 and P
– In some cases remove specific trace organic constituents and compounds
• Role of microorganisms:
– The removal of dissolved and particulate carbonaceous BOD and the
stabilization of organic matter found in wastewater is accomplished biologically
using variety of microorganisms (bacteria, protozoa fungi, rotifers, algae).
– Microorganisms are used to oxidize the dissolved and particulate organic
matter into simple end products and additional biomass.
• Example Aerobic biological oxidation
Microorganisms
• ν (organic material) + ν2O2 + ν3NH3+ν4PO43- ν5 (new cell/biomass) +ν6CO2+ν7H2O

Nutrients
 Biological processes for waste water treatment-I
• Biomass has specific gravity slightly higher than water and can be removed
by gravitational settling.
• How does bacteria remove Nitrogen and phosphorus?
– Ammonia: nitrite and nitrate
– Oxidized nitrogen to gaseous nitrogen
– Encouraging the growth of bacteria with the ability to take up and
store large amount of inorganic phosphorous
• Type of biological processes for wastewater treatment
– Suspended growth process: Microorganisms responsible for
treatment are maintained in liquid suspension by appropriate mixing
method. Many SG processes are aerobic (presence of O2) some are
anaerobic (absence of O2). Most common SG process is activated
sludge process.

• Activated sludge process (ASP): It involve the production of an activated mass

of microorganisms capable of stabilizing the waste under aerobic condition. In
aeration tank contact time is provided form mixing and aerating influent
wastewater with microbial suspension, generally referred to as mixed liquor
suspended solid (MLSS) or mixed liquor volatile suspended solids (MLVSS).
Important feature of ASP is floc formation (50-200 µm) which can be removed
by gravity settling. Greater than 99% of suspended solids can be removed in
the clarification step.