CTB3365x Introduction to Water Treatment

W1a Introduction to urban sewage treatment

Jules van Lier

What do we do with the collected waters that we used in

households and industries?
Well dump them in the environment?
Well no!

Welcome to the lecture series Introduction to Urban Sewage

Treatment as part of our water treatment course.
My name is Jules van Lier and I am professor in Wastewater
Treatment and Environmental Engineering at the Sanitary
Engineering section of TU Delft.

In this part of the course we will discuss the characteristics of

urban sewage, as well as the common treatment technologies
that are applied in the Netherlands.
In our follow-up Master courses, we are focusing on advanced
technologies as well as alternative technologies that are
recently developed to reach a higher degree of sustainability.
Following the Urban Water Chain, the treated and distributed
drinking water finds its way to all households and industrial
appliances.
At both users, water is generally used for cleaning or transport
of waste products and only a very limited amount is actually
used for drinking.
In fact, less than 1% of the water supplied to the households!
Therefore the used waters contain many suspended
pollutants.
In addition, because water is a polar solvent, many pollutants
will dissolve in the water.

The water, with its suspended and dissolved pollutants, is now

called wastewater or sewage and is carried away from the site
of use.

Collection of the used urban waters is generally done by

means of an extensive sewerage network, which conveys the
urban sewage to the site of treatment.
The term Used Urban Waters over Wastewater in fact
better describes the state of the water and, therefore, has my
strong preference.
Moreover, wastewater implicitly is negatively valued: water
that is wasted and that needs treatment prior to discharge into
an environmental sink.
Used urban water is more positively and calls for treatment for
reuse.
This can be the water itself or the various pollutants that can
be recovered as a resource.
In fact, the term Used Urban Waters better fits in the Urban
Water Cycle idea, the central theme of the entire course.
The collected sewage is treated at the sewage treatment plant
or wastewater treatment plant.
The sewage treatment plant consists of several functional
units each targeting a specific group of pollutants.

Such unit may consist out of physical treatment, chemical

treatment, biological treatment, electro-chemical treatment or
combinations of these types of treatment.
We have to realize that every cubic meter of drinking water
will ultimately become one cubic meter of waste water that
may impact many cubic meters of surface water, or even
ground water, when it is discharged without treatment.
Since the self-attenuation of these waters is very limited, such
discharge will lead to severe environmental impacts.

In order to protect the environment, financial investments

have to be made to establish treatment technologies.
Particularly, in congested areas, or urban settlements,
uncontrolled discharge of large sewage flows is conceived
problematic.

We also have to realize that large areas in the world are yet
deprived from adequate sewage collection and proper
treatment.
For instance, in Latin America less than 20% of the sewage is
collected and treated, whereas in Asia this is less than 40%.
In the Netherlands, about 100% of all households are
connected to the sewerage network en finally to a sewage
treatment plant.
In this part of our introductory course we will specifically
discuss the set-up and functionality of the sewage treatment
plants that are currently in operation in the Netherlands.
What will we learn the coming lectures? First, as any
disciplinary field also wastewater treatment engineering has
its typical terminology.
We need to acquaint ourselves to this terminology, Second
why do we need to treat these waters or in other words, what
is their environmental impact when they are discharged
untreated.
Third, we need to understand the nature of the pollutants and
the characteristics of the sewage in general.
Fourth, how does a sewage treatment plant look like and what
are all the functional units doing in the treatment plant?.
By finishing this course we should be able to design a full scale
sewage treatment plant using the design features commonly
applied in the Netherlands
How does a sewage or wastewater treatment plant look like?
This picture shows the largest sewage treatment plant in the
Netherlands.
It has the capacity to treat the sewage of about 1.4 million
people .
Its a modern treatment plant that removes organic matter as
well the nutrients phosphorus and nitrogen from the used
water up to the restrictions set by law.
The picture looks great, right? But how does it function?

The sewage treatment plants consists of various treatment

units of which some make use of physical removal and others
of biochemical removal.
You see screens, settling tanks bioreactors, excess sludge
treatment facilities and more.
The effluent of the treatment plant is low in organic pollutants
3

and nutrients.
You will see this slide very often in the course and every time
we will discuss a functional unit we will indicate exactly where
we are in the treatment plant.
We hope that this approach will facilitate your comprehension
of the entire treatment set-up, without getting lost in the
various functional units.
Since when do we treat the urban sewage?
The obligation to treat the sewage up to standards prior to
discharge follows the deplorable state of our surface waters in
the sixties of the past century.
Lifeless surface waters were common and species diversity
was at stake.
Only at the early seventies, the clean water act was approved
by our Government and from that time onwards it was
forbidden to discharge without treatment.
At the same time, a cost recovery system was invented that
appears to be successful up to date: the polluter pays
principle.
What does the polluter pay principle mean? Well, every
person daily discharges a certain amount of carbon and
nutrients.
This amount of pollutants is, therefore, denominated person
equivalent, abbreviated by p.e.
The person equivalent of pollutants is subsequently translated
in money.
Consequently, every person receives a bill for the costs that
are required to treat these pollutants.
Up to date, we pay up to 80 euros per person per year for
supporting the institutions who are responsible for reaching
the requested water quality at the treatment plants.
In this way, it is also easy to calculate how much an industry
has to pay when it discharges a certain amount of pollutants.
Just divide the total amount by the person equivalent amount.
The untreated discharge of organic matter was already
forbidden in the Netherlands early seventies of the last
century.
However, the uncontrolled discharge of the nutrients
phosphorus and nitrogen was only regulated in the nineties, in
agreement with our neighboring countries in the so-called
North Sea treaty.

At present, we expect even stricter regulations as set by the

European Frame work Directive and adapted Dutch
Regulations.
And were these regulations effective?
Well yes!

This table shows the average influent and effluent values of

the major sewage pollutants.
The organic pollutants are indicated by the parameter COD
and BOD, which will be explained later in the course.
Nitrogen pollutants are indicated as total N and phosphorus as
total P. The settleable solids are termed SS. In every sewage
treatment plant the effluent restrictions are met.
In the Netherlands, in all treatment plants the biological
reactor plays a central and crucial role in meeting the
requirements.

Particularly the requirement for treating the nutrients nitrogen

and phosphorus to a low level decreased the amount of
organic matter in the effluent drastically, as indicated in this
table.
Therefore, biological treatment is often considered the central
core of the system and will be discussed in detail.
As already mentioned: the fortunate condition we have in the
Netherlands is not yet achieved worldwide.
In fact, waterborne diseases are a major killer.
We have to realize that, worldwide, every hour about 200
people, mainly children, lose their life because of these
waterborne disease.
This make about 200 million people per year.
These numbers were collected by the World Health
Organization in the year 2000 when the Millennium
Development Goals or MDG were approved.
The numbers speak for themselves:
About 1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking
water, which is particularly a problem in developing countries
in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
And note that about 2.4 billion people do not have access to
sanitation.
Again, the major hurdle have to be taken in developing
countries.
But were these MDG agreements effective on this?

Well no!, In fact, with regard to sanitation the situation

aggravated and now some 2.6 billion people have no access to
proper sanitation!
The reasons for this incredible backlog are multiple and quite
complex and go beyond the scope of this course.

In industrialized countries we have a full legislative and

institutionalized back-up to protect our environment and
prevent non-controlled discharges.
This leads to strict control and implementation of the laws.
Also, the already mentioned polluter pays principle is widely
adopted, so industries and individuals actually pay for the
required treatment.
Moreover, public perception is strongly in favor of
environmental protection although we realize that this costs
money.
How different is the situation in developing countries
Although many countries have similar restrictive laws as the
industrialized countries, there is little institutional back-up and
very little control on implementation.
In addition, costs recovery is hardly implemented so there is
an extreme lack of financial resources.
But needs are high as the scarcely available fresh water
resources are more and more threatened.
Now, we realize that this course will not solve the world
problems on waterborne diseases but we do want to freely
distribute our knowledge on sewage treatment so that
anybody interested can take his or her advantage of it.