Wastewater Its Journey to Treatment and Return to the Environment

ESI

Where does it all go!

Where does the water from the washer go? When you flush the toilet where does the contents go?

By gravity flow, the waste is on its way to your local wastewater treatment plant!

Why treat wastewater?

Causes a demand for dissolved oxygen (lower DO levels of streams) Adds nutrients (nitrate and phosphate) to cause excessive growth Increases suspended solids or sediments in streams (turbidity increase)

Sewagesheds
- an area where sewage is collected and delivered to a WWPT Blue Plains WWTP Piscataway WWTP

Parkway WWTP Bowie WWTP Western Branch WWTP Marlboro Meadows WWTP

Mattawoman WWTP

approximate boundaries

Where do you locate the WWTP in the watershed?

B

C D Consider the four possible sites.

The volume of wastewater

35 million gallon/day 30 25 20 15 10 5 0
Pi sc at aw ea do ws Bo om an M at ta w wa y h wi e an c ay

WWTP

Capacity Average Flow

Pa rk

Br

te rn

W es

PGC 1992 Comprehensive Ten Year Water and Sewerage Plan

ar l

bo ro

Levels of Treatment
Primary
removal by physical separation of grit and large objects (material to landfill for disposal)

Secondary

Mostly dead microbes

aerobic microbiological process (sludge) organic matter + O2 CO2 + NH3 + H2O aquatic nutrient NH NO 3 3

- lowers suspended solids content (into sludge)

To tertiary process

From primary process

Secondary process

ir iffuser

Aeration and rapid mixing

Settling collects sludge on bottom

Levels of Treatment continued

Tertiary (advanced)
anaerobic microbiological process with a different microbe where O2 is toxic (more sludge) NO3- N2 (escapes to atmosphere) PO4-3 if not removed in sludge in secondary process PO4-3 + Al+3 AlPO4 (s) (into sludge) - aeration to strip N2 and re-oxygenate (add DO)

From secondary process

Tertiary process
Effluent
add methanol as food source

Slow mixing to keep suspended and O2 out

Settling collects sludge on bottom

When the treatment is done

Effluent back to stream after
a final carbon filtration and chlorination/dechlorination

Sludge very nutrient rich

applied directly to land as fertilizer incinerated (good fuel after drying) composted (Compro from WSSC)
Note Leafgro is composted leaves and grass from MES