Wastewater Pretreatment is the process of removing contaminants, or reclaiming valuable metals and chemicals, from industrial wastewater prior to discharge in order to meet regulatory requirements. Industrial Wastewater is spent water that has been used by manufacturers for any number of industrial purposes, such as for rinse water, cooling, heating, or washing.
Pretreatment of Industrial Water:
Water is an essential component of many manufacturing and commercial processes. Much of the water used for these processes inevitably becomes tainted with a variety of contaminants, such as: metals, solvents, cleaners, chemicals and oils. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires that spent industrial water conform with permitted limits prior to discharge. These contaminant limits are designed to prevent harm to public owned water treatment works, streams, rivers and lakes.
Community and municipal sewage plants (POTWs – publicly owned treatment works) are designed to effectively reduce contaminants from domestic sewage before discharge into streams and rivers. Contaminants frequently resulting from manufacturing processes such as heavy metals, soaps or oils and grease may not be effectively reduced and may even cause problems with the sewage treatment process. For these reasons, EPA compliance requires local POTWs to enforce pretreatment requirements where customer discharges exceed established limits. As the discharge limits imposed on POTWs become more stringent, the pretreatment requirements become proportionately tighter.
EPA Compliance:
The consequences of not pretreating industrial water led the EPA to establish strict limits on the amount of contaminants that may remain in wastewater discharged into the environment. It is imperative that businesses, plants and facilities have an effective wastewater pretreatment plan in place that meets the EPA contaminant standards for their industry. Failure to properly pretreat wastewater can result in undue stress on public water treatment facilities, contamination of drinking water sources, and lofty fines from the EPA.
Properly planned and monitored wastewater pretreatment is essential to ensuring EPA compliance, avoiding fines, and protecting waterways. The trained staff at WaterProfessionals® can work with you to develop a custom water treatment system that meets even the most stringent filtration requirements.
