Tertiary waste treatment

Unpleasant as the thought may be, many people drink used water— water that has been discharged from a municipal sewage treatment plant or from some industrial process. This raises serious questions about the presence of pathogenic organisms or toxic substances in such water. Because of high population density and heavy industrial development, the problem is especially acute in 

Europe, where some municipalities process 50% or more of their water from used sources. Obviously, there is a great need to treat wastewater in a manner that makes it amenable to reuse. This requires treatment beyond the secondary processes. 

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The design of a waste treatment system requires data that was not available to me. A secondary system to reduce the biological oxygen demand and a tertiary system to at least remove most of the phosphates are required. Whether styrene is biodegradable was not known. If it is not, then the tertiary system will have to be designed to remove it also. 

Guardabassi L, Lo Fo Wong DM, Dalsgaard A (2002) The effects of tertiary waste water treatment on the prevalence of antimicrobial resistant bacteria. Water Res 36(8) 1955-1964... 

Army. 1983b. Tertiary treatment of effluent from Holston AAP industrial liquid waste treatment facility III. Ultraviolet radiation and ozone studies TNT, RDX, HMX, TAX, and SEX. Frederick, MD U.S. Army Medical Bioengineering Research and Development Laboratory, Fort Detrick. Document no. AD A137672. 

Tertiary carbon systems have, in general, performed more successfully than IPCT systems in municipal waste treatment applications. This is due in part to the increased adsorptive loading required of IPCT systems over tertiary units in which the carbon beds are merely polishing filters. Both tertiary and IPCT applications have been beset by design and/or operational difficulties, the majority of which have been mechanical in nature rather than failures in process performance. However, these problems have tended to be more severe in IPCT cases in terms of system impact as well as in fact. In IPCT plants, the carbon system is more central to overall treatment than in tertiary units, hence system failures in the former applications make achievement of discharge permits virtually impossible. 

Distribution of aniline and aromatic amines depends on the level of waste treatment, which in turn determines the amount released to the environment. Aniline, unlike secondary and tertiary amines, is moderately soluble, and is released to the environment primarily in wastewater from its manufacture, and at sites where polyurethanes, rubber,... 

High-Level Solid Waste Treatment. Cladding hulls and dissolver solids are generated as wastes from reprocessing LWR fuels. The alpha activity associated with these head-end wastes is normally low, but as a precautionary measure the WTF provides an area where these wastes may be given an extended tertiary HNO3/KF/ HC1 leach. Experimental studies with mixed-oxide reactor fuels (10,11,12) suggest that actinide losses can be held to 0.01 or less if fluoride and chloride are present in the leachant. 

This combination of anaerobic and aerobic environment adds some complexity to the process but enables larger loads to be purified such as shown in Figure 2-23. One of the primary effluent gasses is trimethylamine. This tertiary amine has the very characteristic odor of rotten fish. Combustion methods can be used to treat this waste but these will produce NOj, effluents unless very special measures are employed in waste treatment. An alternative wet chemical processes was developed (Bohrer, 1999). The liquid solution waste can also be oxidized to produce a non-odoriferous solid using hydrogen peroxide. This alternative waste treatment process keeps the nitrogen fixed, reducing the atmospheric... 

Tertiary treatment. Wastewater treatment beyond the secondary or biological stage that includes removal of nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen and removal of a high percentage of suspended solids. Also known as advanced waste treatment, tertiary treatment produces a high-quality effluent. 

Tertiary treatment. Tertiary or polishing treatment prepares the aqueous waste for final discharge. The final quality of the effluent depends on the nature and flow of the receiving water. Table 11.3 gives an indication of the final quality required. ... 

There are four stages preliminary, primary, secondary, and tertiary treatment processes, which differ mainly by the number of operations performed on the waste steams (2,3). 

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