Biological Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

Preventing environmental pollution by adequately treating the ever-increasing volume of wastewater generated by the over 8.1 billion (UN 2024 projection) people in the world, meeting governments’ often updated effluent quality standards as a result of emerging contaminants in domestic and industrial wastewater, operating wastewater treatment process to generate energy through methane production and capture to save operating costs, and deploying a compact system to fit reducing installation space are some of the daring challenges facing sustainable wastewater treatment technologies today. Hence, there is a need for continued innovation and development of treatment processes. The current chapter discussed advancements in biological wastewater treatment technologies through the years with a focus on reasons for improvements in technologies. Some of the reasons highlighted are capital and operational costs, plant volumetric capacity, effluent quality, efficient nutrient removal, biofouling and membrane clogging, treatment plant installation size, etc. The chapter also discussed biochemical oxygen demand as a measure of water quality for biological treatment systems, the role of genetically engineered microorganisms in biological wastewater treatment, bioremediation as a biological treatment process, treatment plant pilot-scale, and upgrade to full-scale.