Overview

Although the laws and regulations that require industrial wastewater treatment are constantly changing, the fundamental principles on which treatment technologies are based do not change. This chapter presents a summarized version of the basic chemistry and physics on which treatment technologies are based, with the objective of showing that a command of these principles can enable quick, efficient identification of very effective treatment schemes for almost any given type of wastewater.

The fundamental idea upon which the approach suggested in this chapter is based can be stated as follows: if the mechanisms by which individual pollutants become incorporated into a waste stream can be identified, analyzed, and described, the most efficient methodology of removal, or treatment, will be obvious.

As an example of the usefulness of this approach to quickly develop an effective, efficient treatment scheme, consider the leachate from a landfill that is to be pretreated and then discharged to a municipal wastewater treatment facility (a publicly owned treatment works, or POTW). The waste sludge from the POTW is disposed of by land application, therefore, a restrictive limitation is placed on heavy metals in the pretreated leachate. Analysis of this leachate shows that the content of iron is higher than permissable by the landfill. Other metals, such as cadmium (probably from discarded batteries), zinc, copper, nickel, and lead, may also be present in excess of the concentrations allowed by the landfill s pretreatment permit but are substantially lower than the iron content.

Knowledge of the following enabled quick conceptualization...