Effluent Treatment—Summary

When viewing effluent treatment methods, it is clear that the basic problem of disposing of waste material safety is, in many cases, not so much solved but moved from one place to another. The fundamental problem is that once waste has been created, it cannot be destroyed. The waste can be concentrated or diluted, its physical or chemical form can be changed, but it cannot be destroyed. 

If a method of treatment can be used that allows material to be recycled, then the waste problem is truly solved. However, if the treatment simply concentrates the waste as a concentrated liquid. 

It must be clear that the best method for dealing with effluent problems is to solve the problem at source, i.e., waste minimization. 

Freeman, H. M., Standard Handbook of Hazardous Waste Treatment and Disposal, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1989. 

Berkowitz, J. B., Funkhouser, J. T., and Stevens, J. I., Unit Operations for Treatment of Hazardous Industrial Wastes, Noyes Data Corporation, Park Ridge, N.J., 1978. 

---

In summary, the (advanced) treatment processes are not compatible with sustainable development as they are end-of-the-pipe technologies and not affordable in all countries. The presence of synthetic chemicals such as APIs and pharmaceutical excipients in water demonstrates that conventional effluent treatment is not effective. 

The information gathered in the first two steps is often collected in an effluent summary worksheet. An effluent summary lists the regulated pollutants produced by the process and summarizes the quantities produced and where they originate. The effluent summary can be used to focus waste minimization efforts and as a design basis for the design of effluent treatment processes. The information in the effluent... 

Table 5 Summary of FM final effluent concentrations from wastewater treatment... 

NCASI. 1993. Summary of data reflective of pulp and paper industry progress in reducing the TCDD/TCDF content of effluents, pulps and wastewater treatment sludges. National Council of the Paper Industry for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc. Special report no. 93-08. 

Satriana (2) provides a summary of the development of flue gas treatment technology. The first commercial application of flue gas scrubbing for sulfur dioxide control was at the Battersea-A Power Station [228 MW(e)] in London, England, in 1933. The process used a packed spray tower with a tail-end alkaline wash to remove 90 percent of the sulfur dioxide and particulates. Alkaline water from the Thames River provided most of the alkali for absorption. The scrubber effluent was discharged back into the Thames River after oxidation and settling. A similar process was also operated at the Battersea-B Power Station [245 MW(e)] beginning in 1949. The Battersea-B system operated successfully until 1969, when desulfurization efforts were suspended due to adverse effects on Thames River water quality. The Battersea-A system continued until 1975, when the station was closed. 

Environment Agency (1996) The Identification and Assessment of Oestrogenic Substances in Sewage Treatment Works Effluents. R D Technical Summary P38. London Environment Agency. 

Table 2 Summary of analytical results of select emerging contaminants from a study of 11 wastewater treatment plant effluents [75] and 15 wastewater treatment plant biosolids [83]. RL - reporting level Freq Detec - frequency of detection Max - maximum concentration ND - not detected... 

Fleischmann and Pons were actually the first to observe the production of helium-4 in the Pd/D system [4]. However, due to the extensive criticism of their 1989 announcement, they did not want ... to open another front for attacks on their work, and so their measurements of helium-4 were never officially reported. The first reported experiments correlating the calorimetric excess enthalpy and helium-4 production were conducted by Miles in 1990 at the Naval Weapons Center (now NAWCWD) in China Lake, California, and the helium measurements were performed under the supervision of Bush at the University of Texas [6-8]. The presence of helium-4 was observed in eight out of nine effluent gas samples collected during the presence of excess heat [7,8]. No helium-4 was observed for six out of the six samples of effluent gas for a Pd/H20 control study. Measurements were also conducted for heUum-3 in these studies, but none was detected [6]. In summary, for all experiments conducted by Miles at NAWCWD, 12 out of 12 produced no excess helium-4 when no excess heat was measured, and 18 out of 21 experiments gave a correlation between the measurements of excess heat and helium-4 [8, 18]. Three of the experiments that produced hehum-4 were conducted under double-blind rules [8, 18]. An exact statistical treatment for all experiments shows that the probability is only one in 750 000 that the China Lake set of heat and helium-4 measurements could be this well correlated due to random experimental errors [18]. Furthermore, the rate of helium-4 production was always in the appropriate range of 10 to 10 atoms per second per watt of excess power for D -I- D or other likely nuclear reactions [8,18]. 

A summary of potentially suitable industrial wastewater treatment technologies for various waste types is given in Table 3.9. Additionally, there are three basic approaches to land treatment of nonhazardous industrial effluent wastewater, as depicted in Fig. 3.10. 

---