Sewage treatment plant
Sewage treatment (or domestic wastewater treatment, municipal wastewater treatment) is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage. Sewage contains wastewater from households and businesses and possibly pre-treated industrial wastewater. Physical, chemical, and biological processes are used to remove contaminants and produce treated wastewater (or treated effluent) that is safe enough for release into the environment. A by-product of sewage treatment is a semi-solid waste or slurry, called sewage sludge. The sludge has to undergo further treatment before being suitable for disposal or application to land. The term “sewage treatment plant” is often used interchangeably with the term “wastewater treatment plant”.
For most cities, the sewer system will also carry a proportion of industrial effluent to the sewage treatment plant that has usually received pre-treatment at the factories to reduce the pollutant load. If the sewer system is a combined sewer, then it will also carry urban runoff (stormwater) to the sewage treatment plant. Sewage is conveyed in sewerage which comprises the drains, pipework and pumps to convey the sewage to the treatment works inlet. The treatment of municipal wastewater is part of the field of sanitation. Sanitation also includes the management of human waste and solid waste as well as stormwater (drainage) management.
At the global level, an estimated 52% of municipal wastewater is treated. However, wastewater treatment rates are highly unequal for different countries around the world. For example, while high-income countries treat approximately 74% of their municipal wastewater, developing countries treat an average of just 4.2%. Wastewater that is discharged untreated into the environment can cause water pollution.
In developing countries and in rural areas with low population densities, sewage is often treated by various on-site sanitation systems and not conveyed in sewers. These systems include septic tanks connected to drain fields, on-site sewage systems (OSS), vermifilter systems and many more. A typical sewage treatment plant in a high-income country may include primary treatment to remove solid material, secondary treatment to digest dissolved and suspended organic material as well as the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus, and – sometimes but not always – disinfection to kill pathogenic bacteria. Sewage can also be treated by processes using “Nature-based solutions”.