Tertiary Effluent

In municipal wastewater treatment plants, tertiary treatment of effluent involves a series of additional steps after secondary treatment to further reduce organics, turbidity, nitrogen, phosphorus, metals, and pathogens. Most processes involve some type of physicochemical treatment such as coagulation, filtration, activated carbon adsorption of organics, reverse osmosis, and additional disinfection. Tertiary treatment of wastewater is practiced for additional protection of wildlife after discharge into rivers or lakes. Even more commonly, it is performed when the wastewater is to be reused for irrigation (e.g., food crops, golf courses), for recreational purposes (e.g., lakes, estuaries), or for drinking water.

Tertiary treatment, which refers to the final stage of a conventional treatment technique, uses advanced treatment options and it focuses for specific pollutant removal, disinfection, etc. Some of the advanced treatment techniques used for pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) can also be included in the tertiary treatment. The advanced oxidation processes using ozone, UV radiation, chlorination, etc. fall into tertiary treatment techniques. Reverse osmosis (RO) is another efficient tertiary treatment option.

Each type of advanced treatment technique and the associated equipment, as listed above, benefit from the protection of an automatic screen filter. As small amounts of suspended solids will damage sensitive elements, it is important to guarantee high quality water as it enters these final treatment stages. Forsta self-cleaning filters provide reliable fine screen filtration for tertiary filtration with screens as fine as 5 micron for protection of UV and RO systems.