INDUSTRIAL WASTE WATER TREATMENT

SIJI RAJU
DEEPTHI SUSAN ZACHARIAH
III YEAR CIVIL ENGINEERING

VEL TECH HIGH TECH DR.RR & DR.SR ENGINEERING

COLLEGE

Email: [email protected]
ABSTRACT:

Industrial wastewater treatment covers the mechanisms

and processes used to treat waters that have been contaminated in
some way by anthropogenic industrial or commercial activities prior to
its release into the environment or its re-use.
Most industries produce some wet waste although recent trends in
the developed world have been to minimize such production or
recycle such waste within the production process. However, many
industries remain dependent on processes that produce wastewaters.
The wastewater released by these industries contains harmful gases
and certain products that affects the environment and even affects
the human life. The wastewater released by the industries has to be
treated before releasing it out to the environment. Certain processes
can be done to treat the industrial wastewater so that the harm
caused by the industrial wastewater to the environment can be
minimized to a large extent.

INTRODUCTION:

Treatment of wastewater involves the removal

of harmful gases, organic and inorganic impurities before they are
released into the atmosphere .The wastewaters have to be treated
in the industry itself before letting it out into the atmosphere. The
treatment of waste wastewater involves the various methods.

SOURCES OF INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER:

 Iron and steel industry

Mines and quarries
Food industry
Complex organic chemicals industry
Nuclear industry

IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY:

The production of iron from its ores

involves powerful reduction reactions in blast furnaces. Cooling
waters are inevitably contaminated with products
especially ammonia and cyanide. Production of coke from coal in
coking plants also requires water cooling and the use of water in by-
products separation. Contamination of waste streams includes
gasification products such as benzene, naphthalene, anthracene,
cyanide, ammonia, phenols, cresols together with a range of more
complex organic compounds known collectively as polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH).
The conversion of iron or steel into sheet, wire or rods requires hot
and cold mechanical transformation stages frequently employing
water as a lubricant and coolant. Contaminants include hydraulic
oils, tallow and particulate solids. Final treatment of iron and steel
products before onward sale into manufacturing includes pickling in
strong mineral acid to remove rust and prepare the surface
for tin or chromium plating or for other surface treatments such
as galvanisation or painting. The two acids commonly used
are hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid. Wastewaters include acidic
rinse waters together with waste acid. Although many plants operate
acid recovery plants, (particularly those using Hydrochloric acid),
where the mineral acid is boiled away from the iron salts, there
remains a large volume of highly acidferrous sulfate or ferrous
chloride to be disposed of. Many steel industry wastewaters are
contaminated by hydraulic oil also known assoluble oil.

MINES AND QUARRIES:

Mine wastewater effluent with neutralized pH from tailing runoff.

Taken in Peru

.
 The principal waste-waters associated
with mines and quarries are slurries of rock particles in water. These
arise from rainfall washing exposed surfaces and haul roads and also
from rock washing and grading processes. Volumes of water can be
very high, especially rainfall related arisings on large sites. Some
specialized separation operations, such as coal washing to separate
coal from native rock using density gradients, can produce
wastewater contaminated by fine particulate haematite and
surfactants. Oils and hydraulic oils are also common contaminants.
Wastewater from metal mines and ore recovery plants are inevitably
contaminated by the minerals present in the native rock formations.
Following crushing and extraction of the desirable materials,
undesirable materials may become contaminated in the wastewater.
For metal mines, this can include unwanted metals such as zinc and
other materials such as arsenic. Extraction of high value metals such
as gold and silver may generate slimescontaining very fine particles
in where physical removal of contaminants becomes particularly
difficult.

FOOD INDUSTRY:
Wastewater generated from agricultural and food
operations has distinctive characteristics that set it apart from
common municipal wastewater managed by public or
private wastewater treatment plants throughout the world: it
is biodegradable and nontoxic, but that has high concentrations
of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and suspended solids (SS).
[1]
The constituents of food and agriculture wastewater are often
complex to predict due to the differences in BOD and pH in effluents
from vegetable, fruit, and meat products and due to the seasonal
nature of food processing and postharvesting.
Processing of food from raw materials requires large volumes of high
grade water. Vegetable washing generates waters with high loads
ofparticulate matter and some dissolved organics. It may also contain
surfactants.
Animal slaughter and processing produces very strong organic waste
from body fluids, such as blood, and gut contents. This wastewater is
frequently contaminated by significant levels of antibiotics and
growth hormones from the animals and by a variety of pesticides
used to control external parasites. Insecticide residues in fleeces is a
particular problem in treating waters generated in wool processing.
Processing food for sale produces wastes generated from cooking
which are often rich in plant organic material and may also
containsalt, flavourings, colouring material and acids or alkali. Very
significant quantities of oil or fats may also be present.

COMPLEX ORGANIC CHEMICALS

INDUSTRY:
A range of industries manufacture or use complex
organic chemicals. These include pesticides, pharmaceuticals, paints
and dyes, petro-chemicals, detergents, plastics, paper pollution, etc.
Waste waters can be contaminated by feed-stock materials, by-
products, product material in soluble or particulate form, washing and
cleaning agents, solvents and added value products such
as plasticisers.
The waste production from the nuclear and radio-chemicals industry
is dealt with as Radioactive waste

WATER TREATMENT:

Water treatment for the production of drinking water is

dealt with elsewhere. (See water purification.) Many industries have a
need to treat water to obtain very high quality water for demanding
purposes. Water treatment produces organic and mineral sludges
from filtration andsedimentation. Ion exchange using natural or
synthetic resins removes calcium, magnesium and carbonate ions
from water, replacing them with hydrogen and hydroxyl ions.
Regeneration of ion exchange columns with strong acids and alkalis
produces a wastewater rich in hardness ions which are readily
precipitated out, especially when in admixture with other
wastewaters.

TREATMENT OF INDUSTRIAL
WASTEWATER :
The different types of contamination of wastewater
require a variety of strategies to remove the contamination.

Solids removal
Oils and grease removal
Removal of biodegradable organics
Activated sludge process
Trickling filter process
Treatment of other organics
Treatment of acids and alkalis
Treatment of toxic materials

SOLIDS REMOVAL:
Most solids can be removed using simple
sedimentation techniques with the solids recovered as slurry or
sludge. Very fine solids and solids with densities close to the density
of water pose special problems. In such case filtration
or ultrafiltration may be required. Although, flocculation may be used,
using alum salts or the addition of polyelectrolytes.
OILS AND GREASE REMOVAL:
A typical API oil-water separator used in many industries

Many oils can be recovered from open water surfaces

by skimming devices. Considered a dependable and cheap way to
remove oil, grease and other hydrocarbons from water, oil skimmers
can sometimes achieve the desired level of water purity. At other
times, skimming is also a cost-efficient method to remove most of the
oil before using membrane filters and chemical processes. Skimmers
will prevent filters from blinding prematurely and keep chemical costs
down because there is less oil to process.
Because grease skimming involves higher viscosity
hydrocarbons, skimmers must be equipped with heaters powerful
enough to keep grease fluid for discharge. If floating grease forms
into solid clumps or mats, a spray bar, aerator or mechanical
apparatus can be used to facilitate removal.[4]
 However, hydraulic oils and the majority of oils that have
degraded to any extent will also have a soluble or emulsified
component that will require further treatment to eliminate. Dissolving
or emulsifying oil using surfactants or solvents usually exacerbates
the problem rather than solving it, producing wastewater that is more
difficult to treat.
The wastewaters from large-scale industries such as oil
refineries,petrochemical plants, chemical plants, and natural gas
processing plants commonly contain gross amounts of oil and
suspended solids. Those industries use a device known as an API
oil-water separator which is designed to separate the oil and
suspended solids from their wastewater effluents. The name is
derived from the fact that such separators are designed according to
standards published by the American Petroleum Institute (API).[3][5]
The API separator is a gravity separation device designed by
using Stokes Law to define the rise velocity of oil droplets based on
theirdensity and size. The design is based on the specific
gravity difference between the oil and the wastewater because that
difference is much smaller than the specific gravity difference
between the suspended solids and water. The suspended solids
settles to the bottom of the separator as a sediment layer, the oil rises
to top of the separator and the cleansed wastewater is the middle
layer between the oil layer and the solids.[3]
Typically, the oil layer is skimmed off and subsequently re-
processed or disposed of, and the bottom sediment layer is removed
by a chain and flight scraper (or similar device) and a sludge pump.
The water layer is sent to further treatment consisting usually of
aElectroflotation module for additional removal of any residual oil and
then to some type of biological treatment unit for removal of
undesirable dissolved chemical compounds.
A typical parallel plate separator[6]

Parallel plate separators[6] are similar to API separators

but they include tilted parallel plate assemblies (also known as
parallel packs). The parallel plates provide more surface for
suspended oil droplets to coalesce into larger globules. Such
separators still depend upon the specific gravity between the
suspended oil and the water. However, the parallel plates enhance
the degree of oil-water separation. The result is that a parallel plate
separator requires significantly less space than a conventional API
separator to achieve the same degree of separation.
REMOVAL OF BIODEGRADABLE ORGANICS:
Biodegradable organic material of plant or animal origin is usually
possible to treat using extended conventional wastewater
treatmentprocesses such as activated sludge or trickling filter.[2]
[3]
Problems can arise if the wastewater is excessively diluted with
washing water or is highly concentrated such as neat blood or milk.
The presence of cleaning agents, disinfectants, pesticides, or
antibiotics can have detrimental impacts on treatment processes.

ACTIVATED SLUDGE PROCESS:

A generalized, schematic diagram of an activated sludge process.
Activated sludge is a biochemical process for treating
sewage and industrial wastewater that uses air (or oxygen)
and microorganisms to biologically oxidize organic pollutants,
producing a waste sludge (or floc) containing the oxidized material. In
general, an activated sludge process includes:

 An aeration tank where air (or oxygen) is injected and

thoroughly mixed into the wastewater.
 A settling tank (usually referred to as a "clarifier" or "settler") to
allow the waste sludge to settle. Part of the waste sludge is
recycled to the aeration tank and the remaining waste sludge is
removed for further treatment and ultimate disposal.

TRICKLING FILTER PROCESS:

Image 1: A schematic cross-section of the contact face of the bed
media in a trickling filter

A typical complete trickling filter system

A trickling filter consists of a bed

of rocks, gravel, slag, peat moss, or plastic media over which
wastewater flows downward and contacts a layer (or film)
ofmicrobial slime covering the bed media. Aerobic conditions are
maintained by forced air flowing through the bed or by natural
convection of air. The process involves adsorption oforganic
compounds in the wastewater by the microbial slime layer, diffusion
of air into the slime layer to provide the oxygen required for the
biochemical oxidation of the organic compounds. The end products
include carbon dioxide gas, water and other products of the oxidation.
As the slime layer thickens, it becomes difficult for the air to penetrate
the layer and an inner anaerobic layer is formed.
The components of a complete trickling filter system are:
fundamental components:

 A bed of filter medium upon which a layer of microbial slime is

promoted and developed.
  An enclosure or a container which houses the bed of filter
medium.
 A system for distributing the flow of wastewater over the filter
medium.
 A system for removing and disposing of any sludge from the
treated effluent.

The treatment of sewage or other wastewater with trickling filters is

among the oldest and most well characterized treatment
technologies.
A trickling filter is also often called a trickle filter, trickling
biofilter, biofilter, biological filter or biological trickling filter.

TREATMENT OF OTHER ORGANICS:

Synthetic organic materials including

solvents, paints, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, coking products and so
forth can be very difficult to treat. Treatment methods are often
specific to the material being treated. Methods include Advanced
Oxidation Processing, distillation, adsorption, vitrification, incineration,
chemical immobilisation or landfill disposal. Some materials such as
some detergents may be capable of biological degradation and in
such cases, a modified form of wastewater treatment can be used.

TREATMENT OF ACIDS AND ALKALIS:

Acids and alkalis can usually be neutralized under

controlled conditions. Neutralization frequently produces
a precipitate that will require treatment as a solid residue that may
also be toxic. In some cases, gasses may be evolved requiring
treatment for the gas stream. Some other forms of treatment are
usually required following neutralization.
Waste streams rich in hardness ions as from de-ionization processes
can readily lose the hardness ions in a buildup of precipitated calcium
and magnesium salts. This precipitation process can cause
severe furring of pipes and can, in extreme cases cause the blockage
of disposal pipes. A 1 metre diameter industrial marine discharge
pipe serving a major chemicals complex was blocked by such salts in
the 1970s. Treatment is by concentration of de-ionization waste
waters and disposal to landfill or by careful pH management of the
released wastewater.
TREATMENT OF TOXIC MATERIALS:

Toxic materials including many organic materials,

metals (such as zinc, silver, cadmium, thallium, etc.) acids, alkalis,
non-metallic elements (such as arsenic or selenium) are generally
resistant to biological processes unless very dilute. Metals can often
be precipitated out by changing the pH or by treatment with other
chemicals. Many, however, are resistant to treatment or mitigation
and may require concentration followed by land filling or recycling.
Dissolved organics can be incinerated within the wastewater
by Advanced Oxidation Process.

CONCLUSION:
Thus by following these methods the wastewater from the
industries can be treated and thus we can save our environment from
water pollution top a great extent.