w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/watres

Review

Current state of sewage treatment in China

Lingyun Jin, Guangming Zhang*, Huifang Tian

School of Environment & Resource, Renmin University of China, 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing
100872, China

article info abstract

Article history: The study reported and analyzed the current state of wastewater treatment plants
Received 6 May 2014 (WWTPs) in urban China from the aspects of scale, treatment processes, sludge handling,
Received in revised form geographical distribution, and discharge standards. By 2012, there were 3340 WWTPs in
9 August 2014 operation in China with a capacity of 1.42
108 m3/d. The number of medium-scale
Accepted 12 August 2014 WWTPs (1e10
104 m3/d) counted for 75% of total WWTPs. On average, the chemical
Available online 22 August 2014 oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiencies of small-scale, medium-scale, large-scale and
super-large-scale WWTPs were 81, 85.5, 87.5 and 86.5%, respectively. Generally speaking,
Keywords: the nutrients removal instead of COD removal was of concern. As to the different pro-
Wastewater treatment plants cesses, oxidation ditch, anaerobiceanoxiceoxic (A2/O) and sequencing batch reactor (SBR)
Treatment process were the mainstream technologies in China. These technologies had minor difference in
Scale terms of overall COD removal efficiency. The sludge treatment in WWTPs was basically
Geographical distribution “thickening-coagulation-mechanical dehydration” and the major disposal method was
Existing problems sanitary landfill in China. The distributions of WWTPs and their utilization showed sig-
Future development nificant regional characteristics. The sewage treatment capacity of China concentrated on
the coastal areas and middle reaches of Yangtze River, which were the economically
developed zones. Besides, most WWTPs enforced the Class 1 or Class 2 discharge stan-
dards, but few realized wastewater reuse. Finally, existing problems were discussed,
including low removal efficiency of nitrogen and phosphorus, emerging contaminants, low
reuse of reclaimed water, poor sludge treatment and disposal, low execution standard of
effluent, and emissions of greenhouse gas from WWTPs. Suggestions regarding potential
technical and administrative measures were given.
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
2. Scale of WWTPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
2.1. COD removal efficiency of different scale WWTPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
3. Different wastewater treatment processes in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.1. Application of different treatment processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ86 10 82502680; fax: þ86 10 62511042.

E-mail address: zgm@ruc.edu.cn (G. Zhang).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2014.08.014
0043-1354/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
86 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8

3.2. Pollutant removal efficiency of different processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

3.3. Sludge yield of different wastewater treatment processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.3.1. Sludge treatment and disposal processes of WWTPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4. Geographical distributions of WWTPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.1. Distribution of WWTPs numbers and capacities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.2. Geographical difference of effluent standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
5. Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.1. Overall situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.2. Existing problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.3. Future development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.3.1. New technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.3.2. Strengthen sludge treatment and disposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.3.3. Raise water and wastewater treatment price . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.3.4. Strengthen the statistics and publicity of information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.3.5. WWTPs upgrades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
6. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Supplementary data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

batch reactor (SBR), oxidation ditch, etc. The treatment effi-

1. Introduction
Nowadays, water pollution is a severe problem, especially in
developing countries like China (Qu and Fan, 2010; Wu et al.,
1999). There are many factors that have resulted in wide-
spread water pollution, including 1.3 billion population of
China, rapid economic growth, industrialization, urbanization
and inadequate investment in infrastructures. Over the past
several decades, China's surface water and ground water have
been severely contaminated by industrial and municipal
wastewater, agricultural activities and household wastes (Liu
and Diamond, 2005; Hu and Cheng, 2013). By 2012, the national
wastewater emissions were 68.5 billion tons, and increased by
3.7% over the last year. Specifically, the chemical oxygen de-
mand (COD) emissions were 24.2 million tons, and the
ammonia nitrogen emissions were 2.5 million tons. Pollutants
removal is the main object in this situation (Zhang, 2011). For
the seriousness of water pollution, it is necessary to analyze
the current state of sewage treatment in China.
In recent years, with the fast development of economy and
growing environmental protection consciousness of govern-
ment and citizens, the sewage treatment capacity of China
has been established quickly. According to the Ministry of
Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's Re-
public of China, by 2012, there were 3340 wastewater treat-
ment plants (WWTPs) in cities, and the sewage treatment
capacity was about 1.42
108 m3/d, which increased
6
106 m3/d over last year. Based on those data, China has the
world's second-largest sewage treatment capacity after the
United States. Wastewater treatment generally consists of
primary, secondary, and sometimes an advanced treatment
process, with different biological, physical, and chemical
technologies (Batt et al., 2007). At present, many sewage
treatment processes are used in WWTPs in China,
including conventional activated sludge treatment, anaero-
biceanoxiceoxic (A2/O), anaerobiceoxic (A/O), sequencing
ciency of WWTP is not only related to the process, but also
depends on the scale of WWTP. According to the treatment
capacity, WWTPs can be divided into small-scale, medium-
scale, large-scale and super-large-scale. Since the amounts of
wastewater are determined by the population density and
economic level, there are larger amounts of wastewater in the
coastal area and big cities of China than other zones (Qiu et al.,
2010). So the geographical distribution of WWTPs is also worth
consideration. Besides, the rapid construction of WWTPs in
China is almost finished and it is time to summarize and
analysis the situation. However, there are few systematic re-
searches on the current state of sewage treatment in China.
The study reported and analyzed the current state of
WWTPs in urban China from the aspects of scale, treatment
processes, sludge handling, geographical distribution, and
discharge standards. The newest available nationwide sta-
tistical data were those of 2012. Data used in this paper are
from China statistical yearbook; government reports or official
websites from environmental protection agencies, water
supply agencies, and urban infrastructures agencies; profes-
sional literatures; field reports; and interviews with industrial
and academic experts (National Bureau of Statistics of the
People's Republic of China, 2012, 2008e2013; China Urban
Water Association, 2012; Ministry of Environmental
Protection of the People's Republic of China, 2008e2013,
2013a,b; Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development
of the People's Republic of China, 2010e2013). Note that all
information referred to mainland China and municipal
sewage only, excluding the industrial wastewater.
2. Scale of WWTPs
As the most important means of water environment protec-
tion, the construction of WWTPs has been paid more and
 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8
Fig. 1 e Number of WWTPs in China (data from Ministry of
Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's
Republic of China).
more attention. In recent years, with the rapid development of
environmental protection in China, the construction of
WWTPs speeded up at the same time. Fig. 1 shows the number
of WWTPs in China in recent years. Clearly, from the year of
2007 to 2012, the number of WWTPs increased rapidly from
1258 to 3340.
Table 1 shows the ratio of different scale WWTPs of China
in the year of 2012. There was 3% of super-large-scale WWTPs,
which were generally built in big cities. The ratio of large-scale
WWTPs was 13%, which were generally built in large- and
medium-sized cities. And the medium-scale WWTPs were the
most popular one in China with a ratio of 75%. The small-scale
and medium-scale WWTPs were generally built in medium
and small size cities. The central government requires that
each county or county-level city must have at least one
WWTP. With the large number of counties and county-level
cities, the high ratio of small or medium WWTPs is the natu-
ral result. By the end of 2012, according to the Ministry of
Housing and Construction of China, 1254 counties had
WWTPs, which were about 77.7% of the total counties. Note
that with a population of 1.3 billion, a small city in China
might have 100,000 or more residents. The rising of WWTPs in
small and medium cities lead the popularity of medium-scale
WWTPs.
Fig. 2 reports the relationship between the scale of WWTPs
and employee/design-capacity. The ratio of employee/design-
capacity means how many people are needed to treat 104 m3/
d of wastewater. The result suggested that the larger the scale
of WWTPs was, the fewer people were needed for 104 m3/d of
wastewater treatment, due to the higher automatic degree of
Table 1 e Ratio of different scale WWTPs of China in 2012.a
Type Small-scale Medium-scale
Capacity/104 t/d <1 1e10
Ratio 9% 75%
a
Data came from Urban Drainage Statistics Yearbook 2012.
87
Fig. 2 e Relationship between scale of WWTPs and
employee/design-capacity (data from Urban Drainage
Statistics Yearbook 2012).
WWTPs. Generally speaking, in the WWTPs of China, the
largest operating cost is the electricity, and then is the
personnel cost or the equipment depreciation, and finally is
the chemical consumption. But there are rare data of the
chemical consumption, equipment depreciation and chemical
consumption for valid statistics. Especially for the equipment
depreciation, the differences of construction period, economic
development situation and treatment processes lead to huge
distinction. Urban sewage treatment is a high-energy con-
sumption industry. The transport and treatment of domestic
wastewater imposes a significant energy demand, consuming
3% of the U.S. electrical energy supply and values for other
countries are 3e5% (U.S. EPA Office of Water, 2006;
Curtis, 2010).
2.1. COD removal efficiency of different scale WWTPs
Fig. 3 shows the COD removal efficiency and treatment pro-
cesses of different scale WWTPs. The medium-scale WWTPs
employed the most type of treatment processes while other
size WWTPs covered fewer processes. The reason might be
because the large numbers of medium-scale WWTPs, besides,
some processes might be unsuitable for small- or large-scale
WWTPs. From the 2012 Statistical Yearbook of China, the
membrane bioreactor (MBR), constructed wetlands, SBR and
biofilm process had no application in the super-large-scale
WWTPs. On average, the COD removal efficiencies of small-
scale, medium-scale, large-scale and super-large-scale
WWTPs were 81, 85.5, 87.5 and 86.5%, respectively. There-
fore, the COD removal efficiency of large-scale WWTPs was
Large-scale Super-large-scale
10e30 >30
13% 3%
88 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8

Fig. 3 e COD removal efficiency of different scale WWTPs: (a) small-scale; (b) medium-scale; (c) large-scale; (d) super-large-
scale. 1-Primary Treatment, 2-Conventional Activated Sludge Treatment, 3-A2/O, 4-A/O, 5-Oxidation Ditch, 6-SBR, 7-MBR,
8-A/B, 9-Biofilm Process, 10-Biological Aerated Filter, 11-Biological Contact Oxidation Process, 12-Constructed Wetlands,
13-Others (data from Urban Drainage Statistics Yearbook 2012).

the best, followed by the super-large-scale WWTPs, and then
was the medium-scale WWTPs, with the small-scale WWTPs
the last; but the difference was insignificant. In addition, COD
removals should have been analyzed together with the
influent concentrations and the discharge standards. The
COD concentrations leaving the WWTPs are more relevant
than the COD removals (Silva et al., 2014). In China, the
effluent COD limit of Class 1A, 1B, 2 and 3 is 50, 60, 100 and
120 mg/L, respectively. Since the influent COD was normally
less than 350 mg/L or even lower than 200 mg/L in South
China, the average around 85% COD removal was good
enough to meet the national discharge standards. Actually,
COD is seldom the concern of WWTPs in nowadays. Nutrients,
especially the total nitrogen concentration (TN), are of
concern.
3. Different wastewater treatment processes
in China
3.1. Application of different treatment processes
There are many factors that affect the selection of wastewater
treatment process of WWTPs, such as distinct features of
different processes, natural conditions, social situations, even
the orientations of process designers (Qiu et al., 2010). Fig. 4(a)
reports the application of different processes in WWTPs ac-
cording to the ratio of WWTPs in actual and design capacity.
Clearly, in the WWTPs of China, oxidation ditch was the most
widely used technology, and the ratio of WWTPs that chose
oxidation ditch was 29.21%. The second popular was A2/O with
a ratio of 25.45%. And the third was SBR with a ratio of 17.19%.
As for the design capacity, A2/O process counted for the biggest
design treatment capacity of 33.2%, and followed by the
oxidation ditch with 28.2%, and then was the SBR with 10.3%.
The trend of Fig. 4(a) was similar with Fig. 4(b). Those situations
were in accordance with the statistics from Ministry of Housing
and Urban-Rural Development of the People's Republic of
China that A2/O, oxidation ditch and SBR accounted for about
80% in terms of quantity and treatment capacity.
Specifically, Fig. 4(b) shows the application of different
processes in different scale WWTPs. As for the small-scale,
medium-scale and large-scale WWTPs, the oxidation ditch,
A2/O and SBR were the main technologies. The advantage of
oxidation ditch became more significant and counted 32.4% in
the medium-scale WWTPs. As for the large-scale WWTPs, A2/
O process was the most widely used technology, and the ratio
increased obviously from the average ratio of 25.45% in all
WWTPs to 43.52% in large-scale WWTPs. As for the super-
large-scale WWTPs, the main technologies changed
 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8
Fig. 4 e Application of different processes of WWTPs in
China. 1-Primary Treatment, 2-Conventional Activated
Sludge Treatment, 3-A2/O, 4-A/O, 5-Oxidation Ditch, 6-SBR,
7-MBR, 8-A/B, 9-Biofilm Process, 10-Biological Aerated
Filter, 11-Biological Contact Oxidation Process, 12-
Constructed Wetlands, 13-Others (data from Urban
Drainage Statistics Yearbook 2012 and Ministry of
Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of
China).
2
obviously. The commonest technology was A /O with the ratio
of 39.53%, and followed by A/O with the ratio of 23.26%, and
the third was conventional activated sludge treatment with
the ratio of 11.63%.
In China, oxidation ditch processes include Orbal,
Carrousel, Triple channels oxidation ditch (T-OD), Dual
channels oxidation ditch (DE-OD), and Carrousel with pre-
anaerobic zones (A þ OD). A2/O processes include conven-
tional A2/O, reverse A2/O, A/O, and A2/O with pre-anoxic zone
(A-AAO). SBR processes include CAST (Cyclic Activated Sludge
Technology), DAT-IAT (Demand Aeration Tank-Intermitted
Aeration Tank), UNITANK, and ICEAS (Intermittent Cyclic
Extended Aeration System) processes (Qiu et al., 2010).
Every process has its suitable application. The selection of
processes depends on multiple factors including treatment
efficiency, energy efficiency, cost, land availability, etc. As to
the small-scale and medium-scale WWTPs, oxidation ditch
89
and SBR and their modified technologies are the best choices.
Since small and medium-sized cities have lower-levels of
economy and management, oxidation ditch and SBR have
several advantages. Without primary settling tank or sec-
ondary sedimentation tank, the infrastructure construction is
simple and the management is convenient. As to the large-
scale and super-large-scale WWTPs, it is proper to use the
conventional activated sludge treatment and its modified
technology (e.g. A2/O, A/O). When the scale of WWTP exceeds
a certain threshold, the capital investment per unit of
wastewater treatment can be reduced. Therefore, for large
and super-large-scale WWTPs in big cities, the conventional
activated sludge treatment and its modified technologies are
preferred. Since China has a population of more than 1.3
billion and has dozens of cities with more than one million
people, the construction of large WWTPs is more popular in
China than in any other country.
3.2. Pollutant removal efficiency of different processes
Fig. 5 shows the average COD removal efficiency of different
processes. Clearly, the average COD removal efficiency of MBR
was the highest and was 92%. According to previous study (Ng
and Kim, 2007), the COD removal efficiency might reach 95%
in some MBR systems. The average efficiency of constructed
wetlands was the lowest and was 74%. And the efficiency of
others treatment processes was similar and was about 85% on
the average. Note that the COD removals achieved by primary
treatment were high. The reason was that for WWTPs using
only primary treatment, the unit operations were normally
“Enhanced coagulation-Sedimentation-Filtration”. As a
whole, all major technologies could well treat the COD and
had minor differences. With the influent COD ranged from 100
to 800 mg/L, and most of them in the range of 200e400 mg/L,
the effluent COD level was acceptable.
Nowadays, nitrogen and phosphorous, organic com-
pounds, and heavy metals are ubiquitous in China's rivers,
with up to 80% of urban rivers contaminated to varying
100
Average COD removal efficiency (%)
80
60
40
20
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Treatment process
Fig. 5 e Average COD removal efficiency of different
processes. 1-Primary Treatment, 2-Conventional Activated
Sludge Treatment, 3-A2/O, 4-A/O, 5-Oxidation Ditch, 6-SBR,
7-MBR, 8-A/B, 9-Biofilm Process, 10-Biological Aerated
Filter, 11-Biological Contact Oxidation Process,
12-Constructed Wetlands, 13-Others (data from Urban
Drainage Statistics Yearbook 2012).
90 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8
degrees (Qu and Fan, 2010). As to the pollutant control of
WWTPs, the key is the removal of nutrients, including
ammonia nitrogen, total nitrogen and total phosphorus. The
influent NHþ 4 eN ranged from 40 to 55 mg/L and TP ranged
from 4 to 9 mg/L. The most crucial problem is the control of
total nitrogen. It is hard to do a nationwide evaluation on
nutrients removal due to the lack of statistical data. But it is
widely believed by the experts that almost 90% WWTPs in
China have problem with nutrients removal, especially in
total nitrogen control. Roughly 50% WWTPs could not meet
the nitrogen discharge standard. One most recent example is
Gaobeidian WWTP, one of the largest and most modern
wastewater plants in China (2.6 million m3/d). An upgrading
project is undergoing to provide high-quality reclaimed water
to easy the thirsty of Beijing, while all effluent criteria are very
strict except for the total nitrogen concentration. Generally
speaking, large-scale WWTPs have higher requirement for
nutrients removal. Since phosphorus and nitrogen removal
can be achieved simultaneously in A2/O process (Pai, 2007;
Fang et al., 2011), the large WWTPs are more inclined to
A2/O process.
3.3. Sludge yield of different wastewater treatment
processes
Sludge handling has been one of the key environmental
problems in China and attracted many attentions from the
public with frequent media reports. Each year, dozens of
conferences on sludge handling are held nationwide. How-
ever, the basic information on sludge production, treatment,
and disposal is insufficient. Even in the statistical yearbook,
there were two problems about the sludge data: inaccuracy
and deficiency. About 15% of the WWTPs did not present their
sludge data at all. This also revealed the problem that high
portion of sludge was not treated properly in China. The lack
of official data limited accurate analysis of sludge issues in
China. Following discussions were more from conference re-
ports, literatures, filed investigations and experiences.
3.3.1. Sludge treatment and disposal processes of WWTPs
Nowadays, sludge treatment challenged the municipal
wastewater management worldwide, especially in China
(Murray et al., 2008; Qiao et al., 2011; Tu et al., 2012). Although
most WWTPs in China were equipped with sludge treatment
facilities, more than 80% of sludge was not treated properly
(Liu et al., 2013). Besides, many WWTPs did not report clearly
the treatment and disposal of their sludge. For example, some
WWTPs reported that the sludge was transferred to another
place for centralized disposal without information on the
treatment method, while others might report that sludge was
dewatered without information about the final disposal.
At present, the following sludge treatments and disposal
processes are applied in China. (1) Sludge thickening. (2)
Dehydration, in which belt filter press is the most widely used,
followed by centrifuge, and then the plate and frame press.
Recently, some advanced sludge dewatering processes had
some attempts, such as the conditioning/membrane filter
press. (3) Sludge anaerobic digestion. (4) Sludge compost. (5)
Sludge drying and incineration. Nowadays, sludge co-disposal
technology, such as combined process of cement kiln and
incineration, has a few large-scale applications. (6) Sludge
sanitary landfill. (7) Sludge for agricultural use. At present, the
policies and regulations for sludge land application are not
clear, so the proportion of sludge land application is very
limited. (8) Sludge resource reuse, including making bricks
with sludge in Hangzhou, and sludge protein utilization.
Sludge treatment involves dehydration and stabilization
processes (Liu et al., 2013). From Fig. 6, it could be seen clearly
that the sludge treatment in Chinese WWTPs was basically
“thickening-coagulation-mechanical dewatering”. In addi-
tion, sludge compost, anaerobic digestion and drying also had
some applications. Anaerobic digestion has the advantages of
energy recovery and sludge stabilization, and has been widely
used in developed countries, but counted for less than 3% in
WWTPs of China. Field investigation showed that almost 2/3
of anaerobic digestion facilities did not work properly due to
various reasons including too high inorganic content in the
sludge which resulted from inadequate wastewater treat-
ment, lack of fund, poor management, concern about fire
hazard, etc. Sludge compost is another attractive treatment
method since it may produce valuable fertilizer. However, the
Ministry of Agriculture has great concerns about the potential
health hazards associated with sludge land use and the cor-
responding law limits the application of sludge-based fertil-
izer severely.
In China, the unqualified sludge treatment of most WWTPs
was adverse to the final disposal of sludge in many cases.
Sludge disposal is an expensive operation and results in
environmental pollution if dealt with improperly (Wang and
Jones, 1994; Wang, 1997). At present, sanitary landfill was
still the major disposal method in China. And sludge incin-
eration and land application had a few applications.
Fig. 6 e Sludge treatment and disposal processes of
WWTPs. a-Sludge Incineration, b-Sludge Sanitary Landfill,
c-Thickening-Coagulation-Mechanical Dehydration,
d-Sludge Composting, e-Sludge Drying, f-Sludge Anaerobic
Digestion, g-Sludge Land Application, h-Sludge
Transportation, i-Others (data from Urban Drainage
Statistics Yearbook 2012).
 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8
4. Geographical distributions of WWTPs
4.1. Distribution of WWTPs numbers and capacities
The mainland China can be divided into eight economic areas,
namely Northeast, Northern coastal areas, Eastern coastal
areas, Southern coastal areas, Middle reaches of Yellow River,
Middle reaches of Yangtze River, Southwest and Northwest,
which Per Capita general domestic production (GDP) was
presented in Fig. 7(a). Fig. 7 reports the number and treatment
capacity of WWTPs in these eight economic areas. Table 2
reports the situation of individual province in detail. Note
that we treat the province, autonomous zone, and province-
level municipality all as provinces to simplify the problem.
The Northwest area had the minimum WWTPs numbers and
the least processing capacity.
Clearly, the construction of WWTPs and their treatment
capacities had obvious regional distribution characteristics.
Fig. 7 e State of sewage treatment in eight economic areas of China (data from Urban Drainage Statistics Yearbook 2012 and
Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China).
91
Most WWTPs and capacities were constructed in the east
areas, especially the coastal areas that had the highest GDP
and the highest population density. On the other hand, the
western part counts for a large portion of land but low portion
of GDP and population, thus had much fewer WWTPs and
lower capacities comparing to the east area. The same was
true for the North and South comparison, but to a less extent.
Besides, the regional distribution characteristics of the treat-
ment capacities of WWTPs were more significant than that of
number of WWTPs.
As to the average actual capacity of each WWTP, Northwest
had the lowest average capacity, indicating the domination of
small- and medium-scale WWTPs. That characteristic agreed
with the low GDP and population density in the region.
In Table 2, the ratio of actual capacity/design capacity was
reported, which could represent the utilization of WWTPs.
There were only two provinces, Xinjiang and Gansu, whose
ratio were below 0.6. It suggested that WWTPs in those two
provinces were underutilized for the low economic
92 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8

WWTPs are relevant. In China, the most important standard

Table 2 e Design capacity and actual capacity/design
for WWTPs effluent is the Discharge Standard of Pollutants
capacity of WWTPs.a
for Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant GB 18918-2002
Province Design capacity Actual capacity/design
(GB stands for national standard). The GB 18918-2002 divides
(104 m3/d) capacity
the WWTPs effluents into Class 1A, Class 1B, Class 2 and
Anhui 456.5 0.87 Class 3, of which Class 1A is the highest quality and Class 3
Beijing 385.66 0.85
is the lowest. Besides the national standard, every province
Chongqing 268.87 0.84
Fujian 417.46 0.81
and city may issue its own effluent discharge standard, and
Gansu 128.06 0.53 the local standard must be stricter than the national stan-
Guangdong 1866.09 0.79 dards. However, the local governments are not active in
Guangxi 380.69 0.70 issuing environmental protection standards and only 20
Guizhou 186.17 0.80 province-level effluent standards are issued at present. The
Hainan 94.3 0.74
third category of WWTPs effluent standard is the Reclaimed
Hebei 814.38 0.76
Water Reuse Standard (GB/T 18919-2002). It contains five
Henan 762.05 0.94
Heilongjiang 300.52 0.60 types of reuse standards specifically: agriculture, forestry,
Hubei 603.83 0.79 husbandry and fishery water, urban municipal water, in-
Hunan 514.32 0.80 dustrial water, environmental water and supplemental
Inner 287.51 0.61 source of water.
Mongolia Since many WWTPs did not provide the information of
Jiangsu 1447.5 0.74
discharge standards they followed, the discussion in this
Jiangxi 286.75 0.87
section was based on available data only. From Fig. 8, about
Jilin 285.15 0.71
Liaoning 592.72 0.79 58.5% of WWTPs enforced the Class 1B, and 24.9% of WWTPs
Ningxia 73.5 0.73 enforced the Class 1A, and 13.22% of WWTPs enforced Class 2,
Qinghai 53.65 0.60 and only 0.12% enforced the standard of reuse. As to the
Shandong 1109.24 0.85 wastewater reuse, it simply involved the scenic reuse. Fig. 8
Shanxi 300.53 0.65 suggested that reclaimed water accounted for only 0.9% of
Shaanxi 300 0.65
total wastewater treated. The optimistic side is that there has
Shanghai 664.55 0.83
Sichuan 495.16 0.84
been a significant increase in the use of reclaimed water in
Tianjin 240.96 0.78 China, especially for the water-thirsty cities like Beijing. A
Xinjiang 207.44 0.54 series of projects was commenced to reclaim wastewater for
Xizang 5.9 0.85 irrigation, cooling water for boilers, and scenic use in Tai'an,
Yunnan 264.85 0.77 Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao, etc, which laid the foundation in
Zhejiang 1083.32 0.77
promoting water reuses (Yi et al., 2011). In 2010, annual
a
Data came from Ministry of Environmental Protection of the reclaimed water reuse of Beijing was about 680 million tons,
People's Republic of China. accounting for about 20% of water supply in the whole city,
which is expected to be over 1000 million tons in 2015 (Chang
and Ma, 2012; Chen et al., 2013).
development and poor management experience. And there
were about 35% of provinces whose ratio were more than 0.8.
Particularly, Henan had the highest ratio of 0.94.
As a whole, the utilization of WWTPs in China was fine,
which was in contradiction with previous reports that claimed
poor utilization of WWTPs (Zhu et al., 2004). The main reason
for the contradiction might be the time. Generally speaking,
there were three main reasons for the lower utilization of
WWTPs: deficient pipeline to bring wastewater into WWTPs,
deficient fund to support full operation, and deficient volume of
wastewater due to the in-advance design of WWTPs. The quick
development of network construction, fund increase, and ur-
banization have improved all three situations greatly in the past
a few years. Therefore, the utilization of WWTPs capacity was
significantly enhanced. In some areas like Beijing, the
expanding population demands construction of new WWTPs.
However, it is very difficult to find a site for new WWTP due to
the widely spread ‘not in my backyard’ movement.
Fig. 8 e Discharge standards of WWTPs in China. Reuse:
4.2. Geographical difference of effluent standard The standard of reuse. DB: Local standard (data from Urban
Drainage Statistics Yearbook 2012 and Ministry of
All WWTPs effluent must meet certain standard before Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of
discharge or reuse. The COD concentrations leaving the China).
 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8 93

Table 3 e Geographical distribution of effluent execution standard of WWTPs of provinces.a

Province Class 1A Class 1B 1b 2 Standard of reuse Local standard
Anhui 34 45 2 4
Beijing 2 19 18 1
Chongqing 11
Fujian 4 89
Guangdong 45 147 5 35
Hainan 8 15 1
Hebei 117 41 25
Heilongjiang 6 40 5 1
Hubei 1 1
Hunan 21 1
Inner Mongolia 1 4
Jiangsu 13 11 1 5
Jiangxi 91 2 2
Jilin 4 20 14 3
Liaoning 36 47 14 28
Ningxia 4 16
Shandong 92 95 1 5
Shanghai 8 16 26
Sichuan 13 37 1
Tianjin 10 27 14 4
Xinjiang 2 1
Xizang 2
Zhejiang 8 59 4 26
a
Data came from Urban Drainage Statistics Yearbook 2012 and Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China.
b
No distinction between Class 1A or Class 1B.

Table 3 reports the geographical distribution of effluent the urban drainage pipe length and the sewage treatment
standards adopted. It suggested about 95.7% of provinces had capacity increased year by year. By 2012, the environmental
plants that enforced Class 1 standard, and the number of pollution control investment was 8.2
1011 RMB (around 136
plants enforced Class 1 accounted for more than 80%. How- billion US dollars), and the urban drainage pipe length was
ever, the wastewater reuse was rare. 4.39
105 km, and the sewage treatment capacity reached
1.42
108 m3/day. Generally speaking, the treatment pro-
cesses of China were in line with international standards
basically. Removal of the conventional pollutants was effec-
5. Discussions
tive, and the COD removal efficiency could reach 85% on the
average. The utilize situation of WWTPs in China was fine.
5.1. Overall situation

From Fig. 9, it suggests that wastewater treatment has

developed rapidly in together with the economic development
in China. The environmental pollution control investment,
Fig. 9 e GDP, environmental pollution control investment,
the urban drainage pipe length and capacity of China (data
from National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic
of China).
5.2. Existing problems
But there were still some problems. Firstly, the removal of
nutrients was ineffective, especially the total nitrogen. The
removal rate of ammonia nitrogen was only 37% in 2012
(Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the
People's Republic of China, 2013). The main reason was the
relative low MLVSS (mixed liquor volatile suspended solid)
and short SRT (sludge retention time), leading to inadequate
nitrification. Typical biological nutrients removal processes
included conventional activated sludge process, A2/O, A/O,
oxidation ditch, SBR, MBR, biofilm reactor, and lagoon (Qiu
et al., 2010). Performances of biological nutrients removal
processes were often impaired by many problems in WWTPs
in China, which usually derived from different influent
characteristics, design defects, and poor managements (Qiu
et al., 2010). With unsatisfied process performances in cur-
rent WWTPs of China, it was urgent to make some im-
provements in either the treatment process or management
or both.
Secondly, stricter effluent standards are needed. In the
study of Chen et al. (2014), there were about 74% of WWTPs
94 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8
that executed Class 1B. The criteria in the future are expected
to improve significantly in order to meet the requirements of
wastewater reclamation. Beijing recently upgraded the
effluent quality standards to the Class IV of surface water.
Thirdly, the wastewater reuse was far from enough, which
was partially the result of low discharge standard as stated
above. Taking Beijing as an example, the reclaimed waste-
water Beijing utilized accounted for only 19.3% of annual
water consumption in 2010 (Chang and Ma, 2012). With the
largest population in the world, China has a very limited per
capita water supply, and uneven spatial and temporal water
resource distributions (Chu et al., 2004). Water shortage hin-
dered the development of China (Yi et al., 2011). So it is
necessary to modify WWTPs to implement advanced treat-
ment for water reuse.
Fourthly, sludge treatment and disposal seriously chal-
lenged the environmental protection in China (Wang, 1997).
Sludge can cause serious pollutions with high amount of
persistent organics, pathogens and heavy metals (Perez-Elvira
et al., 2006). As to the sludge treatment and disposal process,
there are three main problems in China. (1) The degree of
stabilization and disinfection of sludge are low. Less than one
quarter of WWTPs is equipped with sludge stability facility,
and most of them remain idle. By the end of 2011, only about
10% of sludge was reused to land through composting tech-
nology, and about 20% was dealt with sludge sanitary landfill
or sludge incineration (Kong, 2012). (2) The fund is heavily
insufficient. In the “Twelfth Five-year Plan” of China, sewage
treatment will get more than 450 billion RMB investment
while sludge treatment gets only 34.1 billion RMB with the
ratio of 8%, which is far from the ratio of 30e50% in the
developed countries. (3) The liability subject of sludge treat-
ment and disposal is ambiguous.
Fifthly, the insufficient water and wastewater treatment
prices encouraged the waste of water and insufficient in-
vestment in infrastructures, which in turn led to low-quality
wastewater treatment. Unqualified wastewater treatment
certainly exacerbates water-body pollution, worsening the
environment and threatening human health. Two important
reasons exist for such a situation. The first is that citizens are
unwilling to pay fair prices for public services such as water
and wastewater treatment. The second is to control the core
consumer price index (CPI) that includes the price of water
and wastewater treatment. As a result, mayors hesitate to
increase the price of water and wastewater service but
choose to postpone the necessary investment.
Finally, one area that demands attention is the emissions
of greenhouse gas (GHG) from WWTPs. WWTPs are recog-
nized as one of the major sources of GHG emissions (U.S. EPA,
1997). Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide
(N2O) are produced in WWTPs (Bani Shahabadi et al., 2009).
The increasing attention on GHG emissions led to re-think the
traditional engineering approaches (Flores-Alsina et al., 2011).
As to the production of CO2, CH4 and N2O from WWTPs,
limited accurate statistics could be found in China at present,
especially the N2O. Some simple statistics about the emission
characteristics, the influencing factors and reduction strate-
gies of N2O from WWTPs in China have been done (Sun et al.,
2013a,b).
5.3. Future development
At present, enhanced removal of organic substrates and nu-
trients is the top priority for current WWTPs in China (Xu
et al., 2012). There are three main directions for the future
development of wastewater treatment in China. First is to
improve the effluent quality. Urban sewage treatment should
further improve the processing standards to reduce the
pollutant levels of effluent as well as emerging contaminants.
Second is energy saving to realize low-carbon operation in
WWTPs. Urgent climate issues require low-carbon operation
in WWTPs. Third is the resource recycling, including water
reclamation and reuse, P-reclamation and energy recovery. At
the same time, the ecological risk and health risk must be
considered. In light of the global phosphorus problems,
recovering phosphorus from wastes has become an emerging
subject (Rittmann et al., 2011). Phosphorus can be recovered
from wastewater by precipitation as magnesium ammonium
phosphate (struvite) and calcium phosphate (Driver et al.,
1999). There is no industrial application of phosphorus re-
covery in China so far, which must be taken into account in
the future. Shizas and Bagley (2004) reported that the energy
contained in sewage was 10 times of energy needed for the
sewage treatment. Recovery of energy from sludge as biogas
was preferred (Scherson and Criddle, 2014). Facing with
challenges such as stricter nutrient removal requirement,
GHG emissions and energy concern, the developed countries
widely adopt sludge anaerobic digestion, high-efficient deni-
trification technologies and chemical phosphorus removal,
which China should learn.
5.3.1. New technologies
5.3.1.1. Advanced wastewater treatment technologies. The
advancement of wastewater treatment technologies can
ensure better end-use application of the treated sewage ef-
fluents in an urban environment (Ho and Sung, 2010). In
Nordic countries, the advanced treatment rate for wastewater
reached 90%. However, the technology choice must be a bal-
ance of needs and cost rather than based on emerging tech-
nology. According to above analyses of existing problems,
clearly, there are some issues that need be fully discussed.
Firstly, it is necessary to develop and implement new
technologies for the nitrogen and phosphorous removal.
Nowadays, some WWTPs of developed country are trans-
forming from biological nutrient removal (BNR) to enhanced
nutrient removal, even to the limit of technology. Novel bio-
logical nutrient removal technologies have been studied and
tested in pilot plants, including anaerobic ammonia oxi-
dization (ANAMMOX) (Hu et al., 2010; Lotti et al., 2014; Jenni
et al., 2014; Isaka et al., 2013), shortcut nitrification and deni-
trification (Gao et al., 2009), simultaneous nitrification and
denitrification (SND) (Virdis et al., 2011) and anoxic denitrify-
ing phosphorus removal (Wang et al., 2011). Among those
technologies, ANAMMOX is proven energy saving and cost-
effective (Jetten et al., 1999), which can be implemented
using various configurations of reactors (Wang et al., 2010),
including SBR (Lackner and Horn, 2012), moving bed biofilm
reactor (Rosenwinkel and Cornelius, 2005), and biofilm re-
actors (Meng et al., 2014). Similar technologies include
 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8
Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (AnMBR) (Suneethi and
Joseph, 2011), Single Reactor System for High Activity
Ammonium Removal Over Nitrite (SHARON), Completely
Autotrophic Nitrogen Removal Over Nitrite (CANON), Coupled
Aerobiceanoxic Nitrous Decomposition Operation (CANDO),
and combined SHARONeANAMMOX process (Nielsen et al.,
2005; Shalini and Joseph, 2012, 2013; Scherson and Criddle,
2014). Beside these novel processes, modifying the exiting
process is another effective approach for the removal of ni-
trogen and phosphorous, such as modified UCT technology
and multiple feeding processes (Ge et al., 2010), MBR combined
with A2/O (Sun et al., 2014), and modified SBR which could
cultivate phosphorus accumulating microbial granules suc-
cessfully (Ge et al., 2010).
Secondly, it is important to enhance the wastewater reuse.
More local standards and plans are needed to better suit the
local conditions. For example, the city of Beijing required the
installing of reclaimed water facilities in all restaurants, ho-
tels and apartment which covered area exceed 20,000 m2 and
government offices and research institutions which covered
area exceed 30,000 m2 by the year of 2010 (Beijing Municipal
Peoples Government, 1987). Low price of reclaimed waste-
water in contrast with fresh water price can encourage the
consumption of reclaimed water whenever it is applicable
(Chang and Ma, 2012).
A new area that demands attention is emerging contami-
nants in WWTPs effluents. China has very high production and
consumption of pharmaceuticals, personal care products and
industrial surfactants (Liu and Wong, 2013). Diverse groups of
emerging contaminants have been found in water of China,
including pharmaceuticals and their metabolites (Cao et al.,
2010), hormones (Liu et al., 2011), antiseptics, surfactants and
surfactant metabolites (Duong et al., 2010), flame retardants
(Yu et al., 2012), industrial additives and agents, and gasoline
additives. These pollutants are of low concentration and high
toxicity, which have already attracted the attention of many
researchers and need to be further research.
5.3.1.2. Sewage treatment technologies for low-carbon and re-
sources recovery. It is vital to implement new technologies to
minimize the overall energy balance of WWTP and to recover
resources as far as possible. Anaerobic technology for urban
sewage treatment is noteworthy for the low energy con-
sumption, such as anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBRs)
(Ho et al., 2010; Pretel et al., 2014), and the staged anaerobic
fluidized membrane bioreactor (SAF-MBR) (Shin et al., 2014).
AnMBRs have many benefits, such as minimum sludge pro-
duction, low energy demand, and CH4 production (Pretel et al.,
2014). Some nitrogen removal processes, such as SHARON and
ANAMMOX processes (Shalini and Joseph, 2012; Jenni et al.,
2014), are low energy and low-carbon consumption. Bio-
electrochemical systems, including Microbial fuel cells (MFC)
and microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) (Rabaey and Verstraete,
2005; Verea et al., 2014), have been a hot area of energy recov-
ery research. As to the phosphorus recovery, studies have
investigated the recovery of phosphorus, such as using sruvite,
hydroxyapatite crystallization, nanofiltration, amorphous
calcium silicate hydrates, and acidic or alkaline leaching from
sewage sludge ash (Carballa et al., 2009; Song et al., 2006;
Niewersch et al., 2014; Okano et al., 2013; Petzet et al., 2012).
95
5.3.2. Strengthen sludge treatment and disposal
It is crucial to strengthen the sludge treatment and disposal.
(1) Improve the management policies and regulations, and
raise public awareness for this issue. (2) Implement sufficient
operating cost for sludge treatment and disposal. In the
developed countries, sludge disposal costs are included in the
prices for the water, which account for about 50%. Besides, the
sludge treatment projects are required to construct synchro-
nously with WWTPs. (3) Develop new technologies. A great
variety of sludge treatment technologies has been developed,
such as anaerobic digestion, aerobic digestion and compost-
ing for sludge stabilization (Kelessidis and Stasinakis, 2012);
polymers (Lee and Liu, 2001), thermal (Feng et al., 2014), son-
ication (Zhang et al., 2007), and chemicals (Wu et al., 2014)
pretreatments of sludge. According to the Eurostat report
(Eurostat, 2012), up-to-date sewage sludge management
mainly consists of four different types of disposal methods:
reuse in agriculture, composting, incineration for volume
minimization or energy utilization, and landfilling. All these
should be applied in China. (4) Enhance energy and resource
utilization from sludge including phosphorus recovery. Evi-
dence indicates that the sludge characteristics and manage-
ment schemes in China differ from those in developed
countries (Ma et al., 2012). Sludge in China has less organic
matter (30e50% compared with 60e70% in developed coun-
tries), higher sand content, and more heavy metals because of
incomplete wastewater treatment systems and the different
lifestyles of residents (He et al., 2007). To break the bottleneck
of sludge land utilization is the key issue of sludge treatment
and disposal in China currently. Land utilization of sludge is
an economic and sustainable mean, which is widely used in
Europe but is seldom in China.
5.3.3. Raise water and wastewater treatment price
Based on full-cost accounting, water pricing should be
implemented to improve water use efficiency and reduce
wastewater generation (Hu and Cheng, 2013). Water pricing is
an effective policy instrument to signal scarcity and to
encourage water conservation (Zhong and Mol, 2010). It can
also encourage the industrial and municipal sectors to treat
wastewater for recycling and reuse (Hu and Cheng, 2013).
5.3.4. Strengthen the statistics and publicity of information
Accurate data is the basis of decision-making. At present, data
about sewage treatment is incomplete, especially the nitro-
gen, phosphorus and sludge. Besides, there are enormous
conflicts between information from different sources. In
addition, poor information publicity goes against citizen su-
pervision. Information publication can promote the develop-
ment of the sewage treatment business.
5.3.5. WWTPs upgrades
As the water environment quality is increasingly rigorous,
many WWTPs should upgrade to meet higher effluent re-
quirements. All WWTPs designed with effluent standard of
class 2 need to upgrade to class 1A or 1B, and some WWTPs
designed by class 1B need to upgrade to class 1A. At present, as
for WWTPs in China, the main target for upgrading and ret-
rofitting of existing WWTPs and optimization of WWTP
96 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8
performance is to reduce COD, BOD5, ammonium, total ni-
trogen and total phosphorus (Xu et al., 2012).
6. Conclusions
Through the analysis of the current state of sewage treatment
in China from various aspects of wastewater treatment plants
(WWTPs), some conclusions could be drawn:
1. About 75% of WWTPs was medium-scale and 3% of
WWTPs was super-large-scale in China. On average, the
COD removal efficiency of large-scale WWTPs was the best.
2. Oxidation ditch, A2/O and SBR were the most widely used
technologies in China. Small and medium WWTPs
preferred oxidation ditch and SBR while big plants
preferred A2/O. The average COD removal efficiency of
different treatment processes was around 85%.
3. The sludge treatment was mainly the “thickening-coagu-
lation-mechanical dehydration”, and the disposal method
was mainly sanitary landfill. In the future, it is urgent to
strengthen the sludge treatment and disposal.
4. WWTPs mainly located in the developed areas. The utili-
zation of WWTPs in China was fine except for the North-
west. The most popular effluent standard was Class 1B.
However, wastewater reuse was rare.
5. Aim at water pollution and scarcity as well as the emerging
issues of energy cost and water, it is urgent to improve the
existing technology and develop new processes to solve the
problem of nitrogen, phosphorus and emerging contami-
nants, to enhance the wastewater advanced treatment and
reuse, to raise the standard of effluent for WWTPs, and to
realize low-carbon operation and resources recovery in
WWTPs in China.
6. From the government level, forceful administrative orders
should be set to raise the water pricing, which can
strengthen the awareness of water conservation and
encourage the consumption of reclaimed water.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by Fundamental Research Funds for
the Central Universities and the Research Funds of Renmin
University of China (14XLNQ02) and National Natural Science
Foundation of China (51278489).
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2014.08.014.
references
Bani Shahabadi, M., Yerushalmi, L., Haghighat, F., 2009. Impact of
process design on greenhouse gas (GHG) generation by
wastewater treatment plants. Water Res. 43, 2679e2687.
Batt, A.L., Kim, S., Aga, D.S., 2007. Comparison of the occurrence
of antibiotics in four full-scale wastewater treatment plants
with varying designs and operations. Chemosphere 68 (3),
428e435.
Beijing Municipal Peoples Government, 1987. Tentative
Management Measures for Construction of Reclaimed Water
Facilities of Beijing. Retrieved from. http://www.bjhd.gov.cn/
govinfo/auto4508/201111/t20111103_376525.html (accessed
25.04.14.) (in Chinese).
Cao, J.L., Shi, J.H., Han, R., Li, Y.X., Yang, Z.F., 2010. Seasonal
variations in the occurrence and distribution of estrogens and
pharmaceuticals in the Zhangweinanyun River System. Chin.
Sci. Bull. 55 (27e28), 3138e3144.
Carballa, M., Moerman, W., DeWindt, W., Grootaerd, H.,
Verstraete, W., 2009. Strategies to optimize phosphate
removal from industrial anaerobic effluents by magnesium
ammonium phosphate (MAP) production. J. Chem. Technol.
Biotechnol. 84, 63e68.
Chang, D., Ma, Z., 2012. Wastewater reclamation and reuse in
Beijing: influence factors and policy implications. Desalination
297, 72e78.
Chen, W., Lu, S., Jiao, W., Wang, M., Chang, A.C., 2013. Reclaimed
water: a safe irrigation water source? Environ. Dev. 8, 74e83.
Chen, X., Zhao, X.H., Lu, Y.T., Xin, L., Ma, F., 2014. Investment
prediction and analysis of construction and operation of
urban sewage treatment facilities. China Water & Wastewater
30 (2), 31e40 (in Chinese).
China Urban Water Association, 2012. Urban Drainage Statistics
Yearbook 2012. China Urban Water Association, Beijing, China
(in Chinese).
Chu, J., Chen, J., Wang, C., Fu, P., 2004. Wastewater reuse potential
analysis: implications for China's water resources
management. Water Res. 38 (11), 2746e2756.
Curtis, T.P., 2010. Low-energy wastewater treatment: strategies
and technologies. In: Mitchell, R., Gu, J.-D. (Eds.), Environmental
Microbiology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, NJ, pp. 301e318.
Driver, J., Lijmbach, D., Steen, I., 1999. Why recover phosphorus
for recycling, and how? Environ. Technol. 20 (7), 651e662.
Duong, C.N., Ra, J.S., Cho, J., Kim, S.D., Choi, H.K., Park, J.H.,
Kim, K.W., Inam, E., Kim, S.D., 2010. Estrogenic chemicals and
estrogenicity in river waters of South Korea and seven Asian
countries. Chemosphere 78 (3), 286e293.
Eurostat, 2012. Water Statistics. Retrieved from. http://epp.eurostat.
ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Water_statistics
(accessed 10.04.14.).
Fang, F., Ni, B., Li, W., Sheng, G., Yu, H.A., 2011. Simulation-based
integrated approach to optimize the biological nutrient
removal process in a full-scale wastewater treatment plant.
Chem. Eng. J. 174 (2), 635e643.
Feng, G., Tan, W., Zhong, N., Liu, L., 2014. Effects of thermal
treatment on physical and expression dewatering
characteristics of municipal sludge. Chem. Eng. J. 247,
223e230.
Flores-Alsina, X., Corominas, L., Snip, L., Vanrolleghem, P.A.,
2011. Including greenhouse gas emissions during
benchmarking of wastewater treatment plant control
strategies. Water Res. 45 (16), 4700e4710.
Gao, D., Peng, Y., Li, B., Liang, H., 2009. Shortcut nitrification-
denitrification by real-time control strategies. Bioresour.
Technol. 100 (7), 2298e2300.
Ge, S., Peng, Y., Wang, S., Guo, J., Ma, B., Zhang, L., Cao, X., 2010.
Enhanced nutrient removal in a modified step feed process
treating municipal wastewater with different inflow distribution
ratios and nutrient ratios. Bioresour. Technol. 101 (23),
9012e9019.
He, P.J., Lu, F., Zhang, H., Shao, L.M., Lee, D.J., 2007. Sewage sludge
in China: challenges toward a sustainable future. Water Pract.
Technol. 2 (4), 1e8.
 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8
Ho, J., Sung, S., 2010. Methanogenic activities in anaerobic
membrane bioreactors (AnMBR) treating synthetic municipal
wastewater. Bioresour. Technol. 101, 2191e2196.
Ho, A., Gardner, T., Sharma, A., Hood, B., Chong, M.N., Beal, C.,
2010. Assessment of treatment technologies for cluster scale
wastewater treatment and recycling in south east
Queensland. In: OZWater'10 Conference, Brisbane, Australia
(Lecture No 73).
Hu, B., Zheng, P., Tang, C., Chen, J., Biezen, E., Zhang, L., Ni, B.,
Jetten, M.S.M., Yan, J., Yu, H., Kartal, B., 2010. Identification
and quantification of anammox bacteria in eight nitrogen
removal reactors. Water Res. 44 (17), 5014e5020.
Hu, Y., Cheng, H., 2013. Water pollution during China's industrial
transition. Environ. Dev. 8, 57e73.
Isaka, K., Kimura, Y., Yamamoto, T., Osaka, T., Tsuneda, S., 2013.
Complete autotrophic denitrification in a single reactor using
nitritation and anammox gel carriers. Bioresour. Technol. 147,
96e101.
Jetten, M.S.M., Strous, M., Pas-Schoonen, K.T., Schalk, J.,
Dongen, U.G.J.M., Graaf, A.A., Logemann, S., Muyzer, G.,
Loosdrecht, M.C.M., Kuenen, J.G., 1999. The anaerobic
oxidation of ammonium. FEMS Microbiol. Rev. 22, 421e437.
Jenni, S., Vlaeminck, S.E., Morgenroth, E., Udert, K.M., 2014.
Successful application of nitritation/anammox to wastewater
with elevated organic carbon to ammonia ratios. Water Res.
49, 316e326.
Kelessidis, A., Stasinakis, A.S., 2012. Comparative study of the
methods used for treatment and final disposal of sewage
sludge in European countries. Waste Manag. 32 (6),
1186e1195.
Kong, X.J., 2012. Present situation, problems and prospect of
urban wastewater treatment plant sludge treatment in China.
Water Ind. Mark. 4, 12e14 (in Chinese).
Lackner, S., Horn, H., 2012. Evaluating operation strategies and
process stability of a single stage nitritation-anammox SBR by
use of the oxidation-reduction potential (ORP). Bioresour.
Technol. 107, 70e77.
Lee, C.H., Liu, J.C., 2001. Sludge dewaterability and floc structure
in dual polymer conditioning. Adv. Environ. Res. 5 (2),
129e136.
Liu, J., Diamond, J., 2005. China's environment in a globalizing
world. Nature 435, 1179e1186.
Liu, J.L., Wong, M.H., 2013. Pharmaceuticals and personal care
products (PPCPs): a review on environmental contamination
in China. Environ. Int. 59, 208e224.
Liu, S., Ying, G.G., Zhao, J.L., Chen, F., Yang, B., Zhou, L.J., Lai, H.J.,
2011. Trace analysis of 28 steroids in surface water,
wastewater and sludge samples by rapid resolution liquid
chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass
spectrometry. J. Chromatogr. A 1218 (10), 1367e1378.
Liu, B., Wei, Q., Zhang, B., Bi, J., 2013. Life cycle GHG emissions of
sewage sludge treatment and disposal options in Tai Lake
Watershed, China. Sci. Total Environ. 447, 361e369.
Lotti, T., Kleerebezem, R., Kip, C., Hendrickx, T.L.G., Kruit, J.,
Hoekstra, M., Loosdrecht, M.C.M., 2014. Anammox growth on
pretreated municipal wastewater. Environ. Sci. Technol. 48
(14), 7874e7880. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es500632k.
Ma, X., Weng, H., Su, M., Pan, L., 2012. Drying sewage sludge using
flue gas from power plants in China. Environ. Earth Sci. 65 (6),
1841e1846.
Meng, F.G., Su, G.Y., Hu, Y.F., Lu, H., Huang, L.N., Chen, G.H., 2014.
Improving nitrogen removal in an ANAMMOX reactor using a
permeable reactive biobarrier. Water Res. 58, 82e91.
Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of
China, 2013a. 2012 China State of the Environment. China
Environmental Science Press, Beijing, China (in Chinese).
Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic
of China, 2013b. Announcement about the List of National
97
Urban Sewage Treatment Facilities in 2012. Retrieved from.
http://www.zhb.gov.cn/gkml/hbb/bgg/201305/t20130508_
251788.htm (accessed 22.04.14.) (in Chinese).
Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of
China, 2008e2013. Environment Statistical Yearbook
(2008e2013). China Environmental Science Press, Beijing,
China (in Chinese).
Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's
Republic of China, 2010. The Notification about the
Construction and Operation of National Urban Sewage
Treatment Facilities in the Fourth Quarter of 2009. Retrieved
from. http://www.zjjs.com.cn/Data/HTMLFile/2010-03/
7143ffb8-c699-4532-8a6f-b338a2cf19fd/5a857b51-2f56-4b71-
bd23-4e930ce99f1b.html (accessed 23.04.14.) (in Chinese).
Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's
Republic of China, 2011. The Notification about the
Construction and Operation of National Urban Sewage
Treatment Facilities in the Fourth Quarter of 2010. Retrieved
from. http://www.mohurd.gov.cn/zcfg/jsbwj_0/jsbwjcsjs/
201103/t20110308_202771.html (accessed 22.04.14.)
(in Chinese).
Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's
Republic of China, 2012. The Notification about the
Construction and Operation of National Urban Sewage
Treatment Facilities in the Fourth Quarter of 2011. Retrieved
from. http://www.mohurd.gov.cn/zcfg/jsbwj_0/jsbwjcsjs/
201203/t20120320_209157.html (accessed 22.04.14.)
(in Chinese).
Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's
Republic of China, 2013. The Notification about the
Construction and Operation of National Urban Sewage
Treatment Facilities in the Fourth Quarter of 2012. Retrieved
from. http://www.mohurd.gov.cn/zcfg/jsbwj_0/jsbwjcsjs/
201303/t20130301_213010.html (accessed 22.04.14.)
(in Chinese).
Murray, A., Horvath, A., Nelson, K.L., 2008. Hybrid life-cycle
environmental and cost inventory of sewage sludge treatment
and end-use scenarios: a case study from China. Environ. Sci.
Technol. 42, 3163e3169.
National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China,
2008-2013. China statistical Yearbook (2008e2013). China
Statistics Press, Beijing, China (in Chinese).
National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China,
2012. National Data. Retrieved from. http://data.stats.gov.cn/
workspace/index;jsessionid¼342E99CCCAA0A0CD251787D
D25C34403?m¼hgnd (accessed 20.04.14.) (in Chinese).
Ng, A.N.L., Kim, A.S., 2007. A mini-review of modeling studies on
membrane bioreactor (MBR) treatment for municipal
wastewaters. Desalination 212 (1), 261e281.
Nielsen, M., Bollmann, A., Sliekers, O., Jetten, M., Schmid, M.,
Strous, M., Schmidt, I., Larsen, L.H., Nielsen, L.P.,
Revsbech, N.P., 2005. Kinetics, diffusional limitation and
microscale distribution of chemistry and organisms in a
CANON reactor. FEMS Microbiol. Ecol. 51, 247e256.
Niewersch, C., Battaglia Bloch, A.L., Yuce, S., Melin, T.,
Wessling, M., 2014. Nanofiltration for the recovery of
phosphorus-development of a mass transport model.
Desalination 346, 70e78.
Okano, K., Uemoto, M., Kagami, J., Miura, K., Aketo, T., Toda, M.,
Honda, K., Ohtake, H., 2013. Novel technique for phosphorus
recovery from aqueous solutions using amorphous calcium
silicate hydrates (A-CSHs). Water Res. 47 (7), 2251e2259.
Pai, T.Y., 2007. Modeling nitrite and nitrate variations in A2O
process under different return oxic mixed liquid using an
extended model. Process Biochem. 42, 978e987.
Perez-Elvira, S.I., Diez, P.N., Fdz-Polanco, F., 2006. Sludge
minimisation technologies. Rev. Environ. Sci. Bio/Technol. 5
(4), 375e398.
98 w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 8 5 e9 8
Petzet, S., Peplinski, B., Cornel, P., 2012. On wet chemical
phosphorus recovery from sewage sludge ash by acidic or
alkaline leaching and an optimized combination of both.
Water Res. 46, 3769e3780.
Pretel, R., Robles, A., Ruano, M.V., Seco, A., Ferrer, J., 2014. The
operating cost of an anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR)
treating sulphate-rich urban wastewater. Sep. Purif. Technol.
126, 30e38.
Qiao, W., Peng, C., Wang, W., Zhang, Z., 2011. Biogas production
from supernatant of hydrothermally treated municipal sludge
by upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor. Bioresour.
Technol. 102, 9904e9911.
Qiu, Y., Shi, H.C., He, M., 2010. Nitrogen and phosphorous
removal in municipal wastewater treatment plants in China: a
review. Int. J. Chem. Eng. 2010, 1e10.
Qu, J., Fan, M., 2010. The current state of water quality and
technology development for water pollution control in China.
Crit. Rev. Environ. Sci. Technol. 40 (6), 519e560.
Rabaey, K., Verstraete, W., 2005. Microbial fuel cells: novel
biotechnology for energy generation. Trends Biotechnol. 23,
291e298.
Rittmann, B.E., Mayer, B., Westerhoff, P., Edwards, M., 2011.
Capturing the lost phosphorus. Chemosphere 84, 846e853.
Rosenwinkel, K.H., Cornelius, A., 2005. Deammonification in the
moving-bed process for the treatment of wastewater with
high ammonia content. Chem. Eng. Technol. 28, 49e52.
Scherson, Y.D., Criddle, C.S., 2014. Recovery of freshwater from
wastewater: upgrading process configurations to maximize
energy recovery and minimize residuals. Environ. Sci.
Technol. 48, 8420e8432. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es501701s.
Shin, C., McCarty, P.L., Kim, J., Bae, J., 2014. Pilot-scale temperate-
climate treatment of domestic wastewater with a staged
anaerobic fluidized membrane bioreactor (SAF-MBR).
Bioresour. Technol. 159, 95e103.
Shalini, S.S., Joseph, K., 2012. Nitrogen management in landfill
leachate: application of SHARON, ANAMMOX and combined
SHARON-ANAMMOX process. Waste Manag. 32 (12),
2385e2400.
Shalini, S.S., Joseph, K., 2013. Start-up of the SHARON and
ANAMMOX process in landfill bioreactors using aerobic and
anaerobic ammonium oxidising biomass. Bioresour. Technol.
149, 474e485.
Shizas, I., Bagley, D., 2004. Experimental determination of energy
content of unknown organics in municipal wastewater
streams. J. Energy Eng. 130 (2), 45e53.
Silva, C., Quadros, S., Ramalho, P., Alegre, H., Rosa, M.J., 2014.
Translating removal efficiencies into operational performance
indices of wastewater treatment plants. Water Res. 57 (15),
202e214.
Song, Y., Weidler, P.G., Berg, U., Nuesch, R., Donnert, D., 2006.
Calcite-seeded crystallization of calcium phosphate for
phosphorus recovery. Chemosphere 63, 236e243.
Sun, S.C., Cheng, X., Li, S., Qi, F., Sun, D.Z., 2013a. N2O emission
from full-scale wastewater treatment plants: a comparison of
A2O and SBR. Water Sci. Technol. 67 (9), 1887e1893.
Sun, S.C., Cheng, X., Liu, Y., Sun, D.Z., 2013b. Influence of
operational modes and aeration rates on N2O emission from
urban sewage treatment using a pilot-scale sequencing batch
reactor. Int. Biodeterior. Biodegrad. 85, 539e544.
Sun, Y., Shen, Y., Liang, P., Zhou, J., Yang, Y., Huang, X., 2014.
Linkages between microbial functional potential and
wastewater constituents in large-scale membrane bioreactors
for municipal wastewater treatment. Water Res. 56, 162e171.
Suneethi, S., Joseph, K., 2011. ANAMMOX process start up and
stabilization with an anaerobic seed in Anaerobic Membrane
Bioreactor (AnMBR). Bioresour. Technol. 102 (19), 8860e8867.
Tu, J., Zhao, Q., Wei, L., Yang, Q., 2012. Heavy metal concentration
and speciation of seven representative municipal sludges
from wastewater treatment plants in Northeast China.
Environ. Monit. Assess. 184 (3), 1645e1655.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), 1997. Estimates
of Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Industrial and
Domestic Wastewater Treatment. Office of Policy, Planning,
and Evaluation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
Washington, DC. Report No. EPA-600/R-97-091.
U.S. EPA Office of Water, 2006. Wastewater Management Fact
Sheet, Energy Conservation. EPA 832-F-06-024. U.S. EPA Office
of Water, Washington, DC, p. 7.
Verea, L., Savadogo, O., Verde, A., Campos, J., Ginez, F.,
Sebastian, P.J., 2014. Performance of a microbial electrolysis
cell (MEC) for hydrogen production with a new process for the
biofilm formation. Int. J. Hydrogen Energy 39, 8938e8946.
Virdis, B., Read, S.T., Rabaey, K., Rozendal, R.A., Yuan, Z., Keller, J.,
2011. Biofilm stratification during simultaneous nitrification
and denitrification (SND) at a biocathode. Bioresour. Technol.
102 (1), 334e341.
Wang, M.J., 1997. Land application of sewage sludge in China. Sci.
Total Environ. 197 (1), 149e160.
Wang, M.J., Jones, K.C., 1994. Behavior and fate of chlorobenzenes
(CBS) introduced into soil-plant systems by sewage sludge
application: a review. Chemosphere 28, 1325e1360.
Wang, C.C., Lee, P.H., Kumar, M., Huang, Y., Sung, S., Lin, J.G., 2010.
Simultaneous partial nitrification, anaerobic ammonium
oxidation and denitrification (SNAD) in a full-scale
landfill-leachate treatment plant. J. Hazard. Mater. 175 (1),
622e628.
Wang, Y., Geng, J., Guo, G., Wang, C., Liu, S., 2011. N2O production in
anaerobic/anoxic denitrifying phosphorus removal process: the
effects of carbon sources shock. Chem. Eng. J. 172 (2), 999e1007.
Wu, C.H., Maurer, C., Wang, Y., Xue, S.Z., Davis, D.L., 1999. Water
pollution and human health in China. Environ. Health
Perspect. 107, 251e256.
Wu, C., Zhang, G., Zhang, P., Chang, C., 2014. Disintegration of
excess activated sludge with potassium permanganate:
feasibility, mechanisms and parameter optimization. Chem.
Eng. J. 240, 420e425.
Xu, N., Xu, Y.F., Xu, S., Li, J., Tao, H.C., 2012. Removal of estrogens
in municipal wastewater treatment plants: a Chinese
perspective. Environ. Pollut. 165, 215e224.
Yi, L., Jiao, W., Chen, X., Chen, W., 2011. An overview of reclaimed
water reuse in China. J. Environ. Sci. 23 (10), 1585e1593.
Yu, F., Pan, X., Wang, B., 2012. Determination of four phenolic
endocrine disrupting chemicals in Dianchi Lake, China. Int.
J. Environ. Anal. Chem. 92 (13), 1532e1545.
Zhang, G.M., 2011. Wastewater treatment: beyond pollutants
removal. Res. J. Chem. Environ. 15 (4), 3e4.
Zhang, P., Zhang, G., Wang, W., 2007. Ultrasonic treatment of
biological sludge: floc disintegration, cell lysis and
inactivation. Bioresour. Technol. 98 (1), 207e210.
Zhong, L., Mol, A.P.J., 2010. Water price reforms in China: policy-
making and implementation. Water Resour. Manag. 24 (2),
377e396.
Zhu, X.Y., Chen, J.N., Zou, J., Wang, C., 2004. Study on the capacity
and efficiency of municipal wastewater treatment plant
in China. China Water & Wastewater 20 (5), 35e38
(in Chinese).