What Are the Steps in Wastewater Treatment in Pisgah Forest, NC?

Ever wonder how the water that goes down the drains in your home gets treated in order to be recycled and reused once again? Here’s a quick overview of wastewater treatment in Pisgah Forest, NC to give you some insight into this remarkable process:

• Screening and pumping: The first phase of the process is screening and pumping, during which the wastewater moves through a series of screening equipment to filter out larger objects like plastics, rags, wood, grease and any other larger items that worked their way into the wastewater. That material gets disposed of in landfills, and the wastewater then moves on to the next step in the process.
• Grit removal: During the grit removal phase, additional material like sand and gravel gets removed from the wastewater. That removed material also gets taken to be disposed of in a landfill.
• Settling: The primary settling phase involves remaining materials settling, but at a slower rate than in the first two phases. That material gets taken out of the water using clarifier tanks. Here, the remaining settled material is referred to as “primary sludge,” and it sticks to the bottom, where it gets pumped off so the wastewater can continue to exit the tank from the top. Any floating debris gets skimmed off the top and removed with the settled material, which gets sent to equipment called digesters. Chemicals are also added in this step to remove any phosphorus from the wastewater.
• Aeration: In the aeration phase, the wastewater gets a significant amount of treatment. The pollutants from the water biologically degrade and get eaten up by microorganisms. They then get transformed into water, nitrogen and cellular tissue. This is very similar to what happens over the course of time in lakes and rivers, but only takes days rather than many years.
• Secondary settling: After aeration there is an additional settling phase. Here, the secondary clarifiers allow the wastewater that has been treated to separate out even more. The resulting effluent is considered to be about 90 percent treated at this point. The activated sludge that remains gets continuously pumped out from the bottom of the clarifiers to return to the aeration tanks, where it goes through the previous step once again. The treated water, however, moves on to the filtration phase.
• Filtration: At this phase, the effluent is clean enough that it can be filtered through a polyester media capable of capturing anything larger than 10 microns. The material that gets captured on the filters gets returned to the head of the plant, where it is treated further.
• Disinfection: After filtration, the water is put through an ultraviolet disinfection process, which kills off any remaining bacteria to levels that are appropriate for the water to be discharged from the system.
• Oxygen uptake: After being disinfected, the water is stabilized and of high quality. It gets aerated to bring oxygen levels up to code, after which it flows out of the system and back into natural waterways.

For more information about the wastewater filtration process, how it works and why it’s so important, contact Royal Water Works, Inc. to discuss wastewater disposal in Pisgah Forest, NC. We’ll be happy to answer any questions you have.

Categorised in: Wastewater