Is Your Wastewater Treatment Plant in Danger? Here’s How to Know

Wastewater treatment plants help in protecting public health and the environment.

However, these facilities face various challenges, from ageing infrastructure to inefficient treatment processes, which can put them at risk of plant failure.

Signs Your Wastewater Treatment Plant is in Danger

1. Decrease in System Reliability: Ensuring the reliability of the production processes is of utmost importance. Any system downtime, including breakdowns, can impact the bottom line significantly. If an effluent treatment plant is experiencing downtime or breakdowns more frequently, it might signal the treatment technology is not able to handle the varying loads and fluctuations from the manufacturing unit.
2. Water Quality Decrease: Lack of system upgradation of old wastewater systems can result in an overall treated water quality reduction. Variability in biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS), and pH levels are some common indicators to check water quality. Not meeting the norms of these pollution parameters could indicate a major drop in the water quality.
3. Lack of Maintenance: Regular maintenance is crucial to keeping your wastewater treatment plant functioning correctly. If someone is not conducting routine maintenance, you could be putting your plant at risk. For example, blowers of an aeration system that go unchecked may malfunction after long periods. An inefficient aerator can result in undue expenses on higher energy to maintain required DO levels and to produce water or discharge of a certain quality.
4. A Decline in Treatment Capacity: An understaffed plant can lead to an increased workload and decreased effectiveness, which can put your plant operations at risk. If the overall treatment capacity, set by engineers, is lower than the standard output capacity, then the plant could require software and hardware upgradation to maintain discharge water quality.

The Importance of Maintaining Your Wastewater Treatment Plant

• Public Health: Wastewater treatment plants protect public health by ensuring that toxic/carcinogenic pollutants are eliminated from the stream before being discharged into the environment.
• Environmental Protection: Without proper treatment, wastewater can harm aquatic life and ecosystems. Excessive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus sometimes invade water sources, causing algae blooms. Algae blooms are dangerous to fish because they use a lot of oxygen in the water. They can also have an objectionably strong smell, affecting the quality of water.
• Legal Compliance: Failure to maintain your wastewater treatment plant can result in legal and financial consequences. Set standards are under government regulations, and organizations should avoid a shutdown of the treatment plant and manufacturing plant due to non-compliance.
• Employee Protection: Minimizing hazardous risks such as exposition to harmful chemicals, acute poisoning damage to the respiratory system, allergies, dermatitis, chronic diseases, electric shock, explosions, and entanglement in moving machinery is necessary to maintain safety standards.

Common Threats to Wastewater Treatment Plants

• Ageing Infrastructure: Around the world, many wastewater treatment plants are reaching the end of their lifespan, which can lead to increased maintenance needs and the risk of failure.
• Climate Change: Climate change can lead to more extreme weather events, such as high or low temperatures, which can affect the biological functioning of wastewater treatment plants. For example, colder temperatures in some regions can result in overnight foaming at a plant due to the overgrowth of filamentous bacteria.
• Industrial Operations: Variations in the manufacturing process can result in varying hydraulic loading, which can affect an inefficient treatment plant by causing shock loads.

Best Practices for Protecting Your Wastewater Treatment Plant

• Conduct Regular Maintenance & Monitoring: Regular maintenance and monitoring can help identify issues before they become significant problems and affect the entire treatment process.
• Upgrade Treatment Process: Investing in new, more efficient treatment equipment can increase the effectiveness of your wastewater treatment process.
• Explore New Technologies: Innovative solutions, such as green infrastructure, can help your wastewater treatment plant function more efficiently and sustainably.
• Promoting Hazard Awareness: Everyone should be familiar with hazard recognition techniques and outline the right way to safely execute testing processes to improve effluent management.
• Invest in Training and Education: Providing ongoing training and education to staff can increase their effectiveness and help them stay up-to-date with the latest best practices.

Conclusion

Wastewater treatment plants are critical infrastructures that require ongoing attention and investment to ensure they function correctly.

By being aware of the signs of danger and implementing best practices and technologies to protect your plant, you can help ensure that it continues to provide highly effective wastewater treatment for your industries and communities.