Essay On Waste Water

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Water is a vital component in our everyday lives and crucial for all life forms to be able to survive. Water is a valuable resource with many uses such as consumption, agricultural irrigation, aquatic life, recreation uses, disposal and treatment of sewage, industrial waste and the list continues. Wastewater treatment sites such as the one I visited on Friday, March 23rd are crucial in order to supply safe water for consumers. Actions such as taking a shower in the bathroom, brushing my teeth in the sink, going to the bathroom, doing the dishes in the kitchen, washing clothes in the laundry room, etc. all end up down the drain to the wastewater treatment site. However, inordinate pollutants prevent the treatment plant from efficiently treating…show more content…
Floating material such as oil and grease can be skimmed at the top and suspended solids drift to the bottom where they are collected by scrapers and pumped out to be collected as sludge. The secondary treatment process is a highly controlled artificial environment where microscopic organisms are able to live. Air is pumped into large aeration tanks to mix the wastewater and sludge stimulating the growth of oxygen-using bacteria and other organism present in the sewage. These organisms work as quickly as they can to feed on waste and biologically convert the dissolved solids in the wastewater into suspended solids. The aerated wastewater then flows into a tank where heavy particles and other solids can settle to the bottom. The next stage in the treatment process, tertiary treatment, is to clean the water even more. This stage the leftover nutrients and specific toxic substances can be removed. In order to remove phosphorous, aluminum-based chemicals are added to separate it and settle out. Nitrogen can be converted to nitrate by using special bacteria to change ammonia to nitrates and then denitrified further to convert the nitrogen in the nitrates to nitrogen

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