The Role Of Wastewater Treatment In Alleviating Water Scarcity: Understanding Its Significance

One of the largest threats that society is facing today is water scarcity and water shortage is plaguing the world. To mitigate its effects on the world, new technologies and projects are developed that include water location transfers, rainwater harvesting, wastewater treatment, and desalination. Now, unlike these, water treatment presents a sustainable long-term and short-term solution to water scarcity.

Wastewater largely refers to the water used by industrial or commercial establishments that have become extremely polluted for further use. And, for this, wastewater treatment is needed.

What you should know about the wastewater treatment procedure

To make sure of good water and sanitation quality, the wastewater treatment procedure must be divided into various treatment stages. The treatment process’ preliminary stage makes use of large filtering screens that remove huge solid inorganic materials such as metal, plastic, and paper. It’s then followed by the removal of silt and grit which are harsh to plant equipment.

Wastewater is passed through a primary sedimentation tank in the initial stage, where the organic material’s solid particles are removed by gravity settling at the tank’s bottom. The primary sludge is then gathered at the tank’s center where it’s concentrated and pumped away for further treatment.

Next, the wastewater undergoes a biological procedure called the activated sludge process which makes use of natural-occurring microorganisms to break down suspended and dissolved organic solids. After this, the settled wastewater enters the aeration tanks where air is blown into the water to offer oxygen, thus promoting the microorganisms’ growth. These microorganisms next consume the organic nutrients and pollutants in the wastewater. The mixture of microorganisms and wastewater from the aeration tanks is moved to the secondary sedimentation tank where the biomass settles into the tank’s bottom and is concentrated as sludge.

The filtered wastewater is next passed into a tank where the third stage called the tertiary treatment stage takes place. In this stage, chlorine is usually used to get rid of any biological pathogens that can be present in the filtered wastewater, proving to be a risk to human health.

This treatment is repeated more than once in some instances if the treated wastewater is reused for things like irrigation of food crops or where close human contact may happen. Freshwater is produced after all these treatment processes are complete.

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