Lecture 14-15

• Wastewater Characteristics
• Nutrients
• Microbial quality

• Municipal Wastewater Treatment

Nutrients
Nutrients
Nitrogen
Significance of Nitrogen
• Nitrogen is an indicator of sanitary quality
• Most of N in wastewater present as ammonia-N or
organic N
• With time, organic N converted to NH4-N and in aerobic
conditions converted to Nitrite and then to Nitrate
• Waters that contains org-N or NH4-N: considered to be
most recently polluted – great pollution potential
• Waters with Nitrite or Nitrate-N, considered to be long
polluted, and not threat to public health
Biological Characteristics
• Microorganisms:
• Bacteria, viruses, protozoa, helminths
• Pathogenic organisms:
• Disease-causing organisms
• Major human disease transmission route: Faecal-oral
• Indirect (contaminated water/food)
• Direct (poor personal hygiene)
 Microbial Indicator
• Many diverse types of pathogens can contaminate water,
• Measuring all of these pathogens routinely for determining
presence or absence or acceptable concentration is not
possible.
• Methods are not available to recover and measure some,
• Methods are available for others; they are technically demanding,
some are slow to produce results and their costs are high.
Alternative approach:
measure something other than a pathogen that is indicative of
contamination, predicts pathogen presence and estimates
human health risks.
An Ideal Indicator
• An indicator should be:
• absent from unpolluted water
• present when the source of pollution is present
• easy (and inexpensive) to isolate, identify and
enumerate
• present in higher numbers than pathogens
• respond to treatment and environmental conditions
similarly to the pathogens of concern
• not be a pathogen
 Current Bacterial indicators of Fecal Contamination

Total coliforms (TC):

• not faeces-specific (found in soil also)
• Consists of members whose normal habitat is the intenstines of
human and warm blooded animals.
• Some members are found in soil and vegetation
• Defined as all aerobic and facultative gram positive, non-spore
forming, rod shaped bacteria that ferment lactose with gas
formation within 48 h at 35oC
• Include Enterobacter, Citrobacter, Klebsiella and E. coli
Faecal coliforms (FC) or Thermotolerant coliforms
• Subgroup of TC
• Much more specific indicator of feacal pollution
• E. coli and Klebsiella
• detected by growing at elevated temperature of 44-
45oC for 48 h

E. coli:
• Selective medium growing at elevated temperature
of 44-45oC for 48 h
Relationships among Total and Faecal
Coliforms and E. coli

Total
Coliforms
Faecal
Coliforms
Escherichia
coli
Typical Municipal Wastewater Characteristics

Contaminant Weak Medium Strong

Total Solids (mg/L) 300 700 1200
TSS (mg/L) 100 200 400
BOD5 (mg/L) 100 200 350
COD (mg/L) 200 400 800
Total N (mg/L) 20 40 80
Total P (mg/L) 4 8 15
Total coliforms (MPN/100 mL) 10^6 10^7 10^8
Municipal Wastewater Treatment
Why do we treat wastewater?
• Remove or reduce contaminants in water
• Organic compounds
• Toxic materials
• Heavy metals (industrial wastewater)
• Pharmaceuticals (municipal WW)
• Pesticides (industrial or agricultural WW)
• Remove or reduce nutrients (Nitrogen and
Phosphorus)
• Remove or destroy pathogenic organisms
Stages in Wastewater Treatment
• Preliminary
• Primary
• Secondary
• Tertiary
Municipal Wastewater
Treatment
Preliminary Treatment
• Flow Measurement
• Removal of large floating solids, grit
• Racks, screen, comminutors, grit chambers
• Flow equalisation
Primary Treatment
• Remove suspended solids
• Primary settling tank (primary clarifiers/primary sedimentation
tanks)
Secondary Treatment
• Removal of Soluble and colloidal organic matter
• Biological process
• Attached or suspended growth system
• Aerobic or anaerobic system
Tertiary Treatment
• Earlier called advanced wastewater treatment
• Nutrient removal
• Microbial removal
• Chemical precipitation, granular filtration, membrane filtration, adsorption,
disinfection
Sludge management
• Thickening, sludge drying beds
• Anaerobic digestion