FACULTY OF INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

ERICA MAKONI

N0095604H

ENVIRONMENTAL PROCESS ENGINEERING

ASSIGNMENT 2
Questions

1. State and explain two statutory instruments from the EMA and Local Authority Act
which are to be complied by all industrialists regarding to the discharging of
effluent.[10]
2. State and explain the penalties issued to the industrialists by the Environmental agency
if the laws in question one are not fulfilled. [6]
3. The results of an effluent sample from a company located in Bulawayo are shown
below:
 COD: BOD 1:8
 COD-35 000ppm
 Pb concentration- 100 000ppm
 TSS 12 000ppm
 pH 2.6
a. State and explain the effects of this effluent to the sewerage system [10]
b. Using a block diagram describe how this effluent could be treated in order to comply
with the EMA specifications[15]
c. Deduce from the block diagram (b) and draw a well detailed PFD of the treatment
process and explain fully. [15]
4. What do you understand by he following terms
a. BOD
b. Chelating agents
c. Hydrophobic
d. Hydrophilic

5. State and explain three characteristics of waste water

QUESTION 1
Statutory instrument regarding licences
The water and effluent permitting system requires permit holders to do their own
selfmonitoring and submit reports. The system is based on a blue to green to yellow to red band
classification system based on the effluent analytical results. The colours indicate effluent of
increasing environmental risk from blue to red. The system is such that the heaviest polluters
in terms of both quantity and quality pay the most. The fees act as a deterrent to encourage
polluters to reduce the band classification by embarking on either improved pre-treatment,
cleaner production methods or alternative use for their waste rather than discharging it directly
into public streams. This would result in a significant decrease in environmental fees. The water
pollution activities rely on analytical testing services. It is to this effect that the National
Environmental Quality Laboratory was built which serves to conduct both chemical and
microbiological tests. The laboratory tests all types of water which include industrial effluent,
mining effluent, sewerage, raw waters and drinking waters.
Licences issued are as follows:
 Blue licence- This is given in respect of disposal which is considered to be
environmentally safe
 Green licence- This is given in respect of a disposal that is considered to present a low
environmental hazard
 Yellow licence- This is given in respect of disposal that is considered to present a
medium environmental hazard
 Red licence- This is given in respect to disposal that is considered to present a high
environmental hazard

Waste and Solid Waste Disposal Regulations, Statutory Instrument No. 6

The Waste and Solid Waste Disposal Regulations, regulate the disposal of effluent and solid
waste. It prohibits any person from disposing waste into a public stream or ground water
without a licence. Furthermore, every generator of waste (except households) are required to
come up with a waste management plan by 31st December each year which deals with quantity
of waste, components of the waste, goals for reduction of the quantity and pollutant discharges
of the waste, transportation and disposal of the waste and adoption of environmentally sound
management of the wastes. It is an offence for any waste generator to fail to produce the waste
management plan.

QUESTION 2
The penalties issued to the industrialists by the Environmental agency if the laws in question
one are not fulfilled.
Organisations or operators that would have failed to meet the statutory acts will be guilty of an
offence and if convicted of that offence they shall pay a fine in relation to their offence
including any cost which may be incurred by any Government agency or organ in the
restoration of the environment damaged or destroyed as a result of the discharge. They also
should pay the cost of third parties in the form of reparation, restoration, restitution or
compensation as may be determined court on application of such third parties. The fines will
be different and ranges from Level 1 to Level 14 where the lowest level pays $5 ( that is level
1) and the highest level pays $5 000 (that is level 14). The guilty party will be liable to a fine
not exceeding the Level fourteen which is the greatest or to imprisonment for a period not
exceeding five years. However, one may be faced by both fine payment and imprisonment
mentioned above.
.

QUESTION 3
a. Effects of effluent to the sewerage system:
 COD: BOD ratio
The biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) is the amount of oxygen, expressed in mg/l or
part per million (ppm) that bacteria take from water when they oxidized organic matter.
Comparison of BOD with COD assesses whether the compound is readily biodegradeable.
For BOD, an indication is that a COD: BOD ratio of greater than 100 means that the
compound is relatively non-biodegradable and a ratio of less than 10 means it is relatively
degradable hence our system is relatively biodegradable since our ratio is less than 10. The
COD:BOD5 ratios for our waste have been found to be less than 10 and this implies that
the compounds in the effluents of these industries were relatively degradable, thus, a
possible depletion of the dissolved oxygen in the receiving river and a potential effect on
aquatic life.
 TSS
Total suspended solids should be less than 600ppm, high levels of suspended matter (12
000ppm) result in conglomeration on the walls of the sewer thereby leading to reduction in
pipe diameter and ultimately leads to blockages and bursting. This increases the cost of
maintaining the sewer system.

 pH
The pH (2.6) of the system is acidic and this will cause corrosion of the sewer pipes hence
collapse. Thereafter, there will be spillages on the environment which will affect the soil
and also pollute the nearby water bodies. Pollution of the water bodies can lead to death of
fish and damages of weeds. Low pH also promotes growth of algae on the sewer pipes.

 Concentration of lead
Lead and lead compounds are generally toxic pollutants. Lead is a heavy metal and its
presence even in low quantities in the waste water leads to the inhibition of the bacteria and
other micro-organisms that are responsible for the degradation of the biodegradable
material. Lead shifts the structure of microbial populations thus in turn affecting the
biological wastewater treatment mechanisms applied to the waste water. b. Block diagram
for treatment of effluent
SCREENING

Screening is the first treatment station .Screening removes objects suc h as rags, paper,
plastics, and metals to prevent damage and clogging of downstream equipment and piping.

Coarse Screens

Coarse screens remove large solids, rags, and debris from wastewater. Types of coarse
screens include mechanically and manually cleaned bar screens, including trash racks. .

Fine Screens

Fine screens are typically used to remove material that may create operation and maintenance
problems in downstream processes.

Grit separation
In this stage removal of mineral aggregates (sand and gravel) and other dense material, such as
glass, metal and dense plastic fragments. This prevents silting and pump damage. Velocity is
controlled by proportional weirs. In this system, heavier grit particles settle to the bottom of
the channel, while lighter organic particles remain suspended or are re-suspended and
transported out of the channel. The grit channel cleaned manually using shovels.

Equalization

Flow equalization is the process of mitigating changes in flowrate through a portion of a system
by providing storage to hold water when it is arriving too rapidly, and to supply additional
water when it is arriving less rapidly than desired. It is useful to implement flow equalization
downstream of the plant, because the downstream demand is not steady, but in general, the
treatment processes work more efficiently if the flow rate through them is steady. In treating
the wastewater, the rate at which the waste arrives at the treatment process might vary
dramatically during the day, so it is convenient to equalize the flow before feeding it to the
various treatment steps.

Lead precipitation

A treatment method for removing lead from industrial waste water is to add soda ash and
precipitate the lead as the insoluble carbonate.

Sand Filtration

The lead carbonate precipitate formed is removed in sand filters. Sand filters used in the process
consist of two or three chambers or basins. The first is the sedimentation chamber, which
removes floatables and heavy sediments. The second is the filtration chamber, which removes
by filtering the runoff through a sand bed. The third is the discharge chamber.

Ion exchangeIon exchange resins are used to polish the water from sand filter to the desired
legal requirements. In this unit, the lead ions are removed from the water during its passage
down through the unit and ion exchange takes place.

Illustration of ion exchange in the unit:

Pb+2 + H2Z 2H+ + PbZ

The resin is capable of exchanging hydrogen ions within its makeup with lead ions in the water
that is passed through them. Lead ions remain in the unit and the exiting water contains an
increased concentration of hydrogen ions thus the solution exiting this unit is weakly acidic.
Alkaline hydrolysis

Some substances that are resistant to biodegradation can be chemically altered to yield material
that is biodegradable. Examples are long-chain aliphatic organics made soluble by attachment
of ionizable groups, and cellulose or cellulose derivatives. Hydrolysis, under alkaline
conditions, can be used to break up many large organic molecules into smaller segments that
are amenable to biological treatment. Heat may be required for effective hydrolytic action, and
consideration of proper reaction time is very important.

Biological Nutrient Removal

Suspended Growth Systems: Activated Sludge

An activated sludge wastewater treatment system has four components, an aeration tank and a
settling tank (clarifier), a return sludge pump, and a means of introducing oxygen into the
aeration tank. The effluent enters the aeration tank and is mixed with a suspension of microbes
in the presence of oxygen. The microbes degrade the organic pollutants in the wastewater,
converting them to more microbes, carbon dioxide, water, and some lowmolecular-weight
organics. After spending, on average, an amount of time equal to the hydraulic residence time
in the aeration tank, the mixed liquor flows into the clarifier, where the solids separate from the
bulk liquid by settling to the bottom. The clarified water then exits the system. The settled
solids are harvested from the clarifier bottom and are either returned to the aeration tank. Those
solids that are returned to the aeration tank are microbes in a starved condition, having been
separated from untreated wastewater for an extended period, and are thus referred to as
activated. This process of returning microbes from the clarifier to the aeration tank enables
buildup of their concentrations to high levels.

Process flow diagram

Process flow diagram- Description

Bar screens
Mechanical bar screens and duty bar screens are used to remove large solid particles while
manual bar screens are used as standby units. The standby bar screen will be brought online
when the mechanical bar screen is inoperable or down for routine maintenance. The mechanical
device that cleans the bar screen is activated by a manual start-stop switch, a timer, an overload
switch, an actuator which senses pressure differential between points upstream and downstream
of the bar screen, and a float that turns on when head across the bar screen is greater than some
predetermined elevation.

Grit channel
A grit channel is responsible for degritting waste water by promoting settling of grit to the
bottom of the channel, the grit being removed from the bottom of the channel by a traveling
bridge-type grit removal device supporting a submerged grit pump.

Equalisation tank
It is a well mixed cylindrical vessel with fluctuating input flow rates with fairly constant output
flow rates. Equalization dampens fluctuations. If the input flow increases suddenly, the settling
patterns will be upset to lower collection efficiency. Flow equalization improves performance
of subsequent steps significantly. Aeration using an agitator is done both to keep the water from
becoming anaerobic and smelly and to biodegrade some of the organic compounds present. pH
correction by the addition of lime is done in the equalization tank.

Reactor
The reactor in which lea precipitation takes place is cylindrical in shape so as not to crate dead
zones and for ease of cleaning the vessel.

Sand filter
In the sand filter bed water from the reactor gravitates through the concrete channels into the
filter bed as water flows to bottom it is filtered. The chambers present in the bed allow increased
residence time of the water for filtration.

Ion exchange unit

Cylindrical vessel which contains ion exchange resins.
Clarifier
The clarifier is used to remove suspended solids from liquid for clarification and thickening.
Concentrated impurities, discharged from the bottom of the tank are known as sludge, while
the particles that float to the surface of the liquid are called scum. Water being introduced into
the clarifier is controlled to reduce the velocity of the inlet flow. Reducing the velocity
maximizes the hydraulic retention time inside the clarifier for sedimentation and helps to avoid
excessive turbulence and mixing thereby promoting the effective settling of the suspended
particles. To further discourage the overt mixing within the clarifier and increase the retention
time allowed for the particles to settle, the inlet flow should also be distributed evenly across
the entire cross section of the settling zone inside the clarifier.

QUESTION 4
a. BOD (Biological oxygen demand)
Biological oxygen demand is a measure of the amount of oxygen that will be consumed
by bacteria while decomposing organic matter under aerobic conditions. The more
organic matter there is in sewage, the greater the BOD and the greater the BOD, the
lower the amount of dissolved oxygen available for the aquatic life.

b. Chelating agents
Chelating agents are molecules that have the ability to form more than one bond to a
metal ion, thereby increasing the stability of the ion complex. They consist of ligand
atoms which have two lone pairs of electrons to form a coordinate bond with the metal
ion. They are able to hold metal ions in solution over broad ranges of pH, inside as well
as outside the optimum pH ranges for solubility, at concentrations far in excess of their
solubility limits. These agents have physical structures that accommodate the metal
cations, sequester them to prevent them from forming insoluble salts or hydroxides with
anions or to enter into ion exchange reactions.

c. Hydrophobic
This is the tendency of a substance not to dissolve in water, having a low affinity for
water. Hydrophobic materials are formed based on the chemical concept of
hydrophobicity. Hydrophobic molecules) repel bodies of water and, owing to the fact
that hydrophobes are non-polar, they attract other neutral molecules and non-polar
solvents. Natural hydrophobes include alkanes, fats and oils. Hydrophobic materials
are often used to remove oil from water, manage oil spills, and chemical separation
processes that require the removal of non-polar substances from polar compounds.

d. Hydrophilic
A hydrophilic molecule or portion of a molecule is one that has a tendency to interact
with or be dissolved by water and other polar substances. Hydrophilic substances can
seem to attract water out of the air.

QUESTION 5
Waste water characteristics:
 Turbidity

Turbidity is the characteristic measure of the relative clarity of waste water. Turbidity
makes wastewater cloudy or opaque. It is an optical characteristic of water and is an
expression of the amount of light that is scattered by material in the water when a light
is shined through the water sample. The higher the intensity of scattered light the higher
the turbidity. Materials that cause water to be turbid include clay, silt, finely divided
inorganic and organic matter, soluble colored organic compounds and other
microscopic organisms.

 Odour
Odor is a characteristic of waste water that refers to the smell caused by one or more
volatilized chemical compounds constituted in the water, and can be sensed at a very
low concentration.
 Colour
It reveals the presence of dissolved materials in wastewater. Color in wastewater may
originate from dyes, decay in organics and so on