Odor removal from STPs
Wastewater treatment plants have become an integral part of business establishment, and residential societies as they work to improve the availability and quality of recycled water. Despite their critical role in water treatment, communities surrounding these plants often raise concerns about the foul odor that arises from these plants and spreads in the surroundings.
The best way to remove the odor from wastewater is to deploy an effective odor control system. These units extract the odor-causing gasses from sewage stored in collection tanks and release the odorless air into the environment.
Inovar uses a combination of various odor-control technologies to completely eliminate the odor from treated sewage water.
Where does the odor come from?
Odor arising during the treatment of sewage water comes from two sections of the wastewater treatment plant:
Sewage collection system: This includes the point where sewage enters the STP, the screening grit removal, and the collection sump.
Sludge treatment system: This includes sludge storage tanks, digester systems, sludge dewatering are as well as dewatering equipment rooms.
The key components of sewage that give rise to odor include
- Hydrogen sulfide
- Ammonia
- Mercaptans
- Volatile organic compounds
Releasing these gasses into the air without treatment can potentially cause air pollution and create health hazards.
How is the odor removed from wastewater?
Odor is removed from wastewater using three filtration methods: Biological oxidation, chemical oxidation, and adsorption through activated carbon.
Biological oxidation
Biological oxidation has two sub methods for odor removal
Biofilters
This method uses natural media such as chips of wood or stones as surfaces for the growth of microorganisms. It requires a large area, and the life of microbes is just around 2 years. Due to these constraints, this method is no longer used by most modern water treatment plants
Bio scrubbers
Bio scrubbers are filter media made of recycled glass, plastic, or PU foam. These filters are set up in a tower, which requires far lesser area than biofilters. Water enters the unit through the bottom and goes up through the packed tower. The filters inside the tower oxidize the gasses upon contact.
The biological oxidation method is used in the initial stages of water purification. Natural biological oxidation reduces the BOD and COD content in water.
Chemical oxidation
Chemical oxidation typically uses sodium hypochlorite, which is a disinfectant, to remove odors from sewage water. Care needs to be taken when the chemical is stocked and then transferred to the tank for oxidation. The chemicals must be properly drained from the scrubbing unit to ensure that the downstream equipment is not affected.
Adsorption through activated carbon
Adsorption is a process by which a solid holds the molecules of a liquid or gas as a thin film. In activated carbon adsorption, the molecules of the odorous gasses are adsorped to the surface of the filter media and then oxidized. Chemically activated as well as specially treated virgin activated carbon media is used for this purpose.
Eliminating odor from the air
Do note that the above-mentioned technologies remove the odor from sewage water. However, the sewage which is stored in tanks at various points of treatment emits numerous gasses into the environment which cause problems for the surrounding community.
Inovar offers a dedicated odor removal technology to eliminate the odors emanating from sewage and prevent them from spreading into the surroundings.
What we do
Inovar has developed dedicated technology to remove odor from STPs of any size and capacity. The tank storing the sewage is fitted with a dedicated blower which absorbs the odorous air before it is released into the environment. This air is then dosed with Ozone to neutralize all the odors before being finally released into the environment. The Ozone dosing unit is typically fitted to the top of the storage tank to ensure complete efficiency in odor removal .
Inovar’s odor removal technology can be used for wastewater treatment plant of any size and capacity. We offer the complete set of water treatment services ranging from feasibility studies to design, manufacturing, and installation of water filtration systems. Explore our range of water filtration products here.