What is sewage treatment?

Sewage treatment is the method of extracting pollutants from urban wastewater, which mostly consists of domestic sewage with some industrial wastewater thrown in for good measure. To extract pollutants and generate treated wastewater (or treated effluent) that is safe to release into the environment, physical, chemical, and biological processes are used. Now Sewage sludge is a semi-solid waste or slurry that is form as a by-product of sewage treatment. Before it can dispose of or add to the ground, the sludge must be treated further.

The Technology used in sewage treatment:

• ASP: Activated Sludge Process
• MBBR: Moving Bed Bio Reactor
• SAFF: Submerged aerated Fixed Film
• SBR: Sequential Bioreactor

Types of sewage treatment

• Activated sludge plant (ASP)
• Rotating disc system
• Submerged aerated filter (SAF)
• Suspended Media Filters (SMF)
• Sequencing batch reactor (SBR)
• Non-electric filter
• Trickling filter

Activated Sludge Plant (ASP) technology

An activated sludge plant essentially consist of the following

• Reaction takes place in an aeration tank containing microorganisms in suspension.
• Sludge recirculation system with activated sludge.
• Waste and recycling facilities for excess sludge.
• Oxygen transfer aeration devices

Isolation and thickening of activated sludge in a secondary sedimentation tank

Submerged aerated filter (SAF)

SAF (Submerged Aerated Filters) is BioKubes’ preferred technology, particularly when organic material in the water needs to be reduced (BOD and COD reduction) or ammonium NH4 levels need to be reduced. If complete nitrogen removal is necessary, it is not the best technology to use.

• Tolerant of fluctuations in the incoming water (especially in connection with BioKube’s proprietary technology) This is very important.
• Very stable cleaning process with low maintenance requirements
• Low energy usage
• High performance with a limited footprint

Sequencing batch reactor (SBR)

• A Sequential Batch Reactor is a true batch process in which the fill, aeration, settle, and decant phases are performed in a single basin in a sequential order.
• SBR Basins receive filtered, de-gritted sewage for the biological treatment to eliminate BOD, COD, suspended solids, biological nitrogen, and phosphorus

It eliminates biological organic matter, nitrifies, de-nitrifies, and removes biological phosphorus

Untreated sewage in India:

In the fiscal year 2014-15, the CPCB conducted an inventory of Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) in India. In India, there are 816 STPs with a capacity of 23277MLD spreads across 28 states and union territories. There are four years left before the government’s aim of ensuring that all Indians use toilets is met, but only about 30% of the sewage produced by 377 million people flows through treatment plants in urban India.

According to the study the leftover sewage is having a dump in rivers, ocean, wells, lakes by doing this they are polluting the water bodies. According to the government survey approx. 62000 million liters per day (MLD) generate, where the treatment capacity in India is only 23,277 MLD.

Further review of this data shows that 522 of India’s 816 municipal sewage treatment plants (STPs) are operational. So, although the mentioned capacity is 23,277 MLD, only 18,883 MLD of sewage is actually treated out of a total of 62,000 MLD, where 37% of sewage is generated in December 2015. That means that 70% of sewage produced in India’s cities is untreated.

Will building toilets address the issue? The jury is out

The National Democratic Alliance government’s Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Project was launch on October 2, 2014, with the aim of making India open-defecation-free by October 2, 2019.

According to the most recent data available, the government plans to build 2.5 million individual household toilets in urban areas by 2015-16, with 882,905 completed as of December 2015.

The Swachh Bharat Mission has constructed 32,014 community and public toilets out of a total of 100,000. In its first year, the rural sanitation program installed 8.8 million toilets, far exceeding the goal of 6 million.

Jammu Represents Swachh Bharat Sewage

Jammu is facing a bigger problem around 94% of drinking water is getting pollute due to untreated sewage treatment and On September 15, 2018, the governor of J&K declared the state open defecation free. The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is yet to come to J&K.

 The state produces over 22,000 tanker loads (157 million liters daily or mld) of untreated sewage (94 percent of the city’s 167 mld sewage), which flows into open drains and contaminates the city’s water bodies and sources of drinking water, placing the city’s population of over 550,000 and its significant floating population of over 110,000 at risk of water-borne diseases.

Conclusion:  

Sewage Treatment Plant is necessary as we can see only 30% is treating and 70% is untreated. The Government should take strict action against and they should also generate more funds and try up to set up more sewage treatment plants as the situation is getting worse day by day and The municipal department should step ahead to resolve these problems in each district & state.