Analysis of wastewater treatment efficiency

Abstract

The effective treatment of wastewater from anthropogenic activity is one of prior tool for development of sustainable environment. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), which operate with conventional technology, do not always meet the stricter requirements for the quality of treated wastewater. Due to inefficient operation of WWTPs concentrations of phosphorus and nitrogen is higher than normal in surface water body. The release of inefficient treated wastewater into natural water bodies has short and long term effects on the environment. In order to find out which wastewater pollutants are not treated efficiently, 11 wastewater treatment plants were analysed for their efficiency. Chemical analysis data of wastewater samples of WWTPs discharging different amounts of treated wastewater was collected and evaluated for each quarter of 5 years (2015-2019). The results showed that 28.64% of the analysed samples did not meet the requirements for treated wastewater quality according to the residual total phosphorus concentration. 1.15% and 6.54% of all samples, respectively, were below BOD7 and total nitrogen standards. The results justified the need for tertiary treatment of wastewater, especially for the purpose of removing phosphorus compounds from the wastewater.