Wastewater treatment plants (also called Water Resource Facility WRFF) must treat the water before it can be released back into the environment (rivers, lakes, etc) and before it can be used as drinking water for a city, town, or municipality.
The sewage water from industrial, commercial, or residential sources goes to the wastewater treatment plant for primary treatment, which generally filters out large particulate like dirt, sand, clay, and debris and also allows heavier particulate to sink to the bottom float to be removed. Secondary treatment involves aerobically grown micro-organisms that treat organic impurities in the water.
The next step is disinfection of the wastewater. Infections materials in the water must be eliminated to make the effluent water safe. The biosloids, sludge and other larger material that is filtered out in the first process is treated through anaerobic or aerobic digestors using bacteria which breaks down the solids. This reduces the toxic odor byproduct like hydrogen sulfide (H2S).
A natural byproduct of this wastewater treatment is called biogas which can be sold and used for energy. Another byproduct of this treatment is methane which, in the past, used to be sent to the flare to be burned but this creates unwanted environmental affects.
Instead of burning, it has become popular to treat the gas into biogas which can be used for energy in gas pipelines. However, special caution should be given to the harmful and toxic byproduct of hydrogen sulfide. It becomes imperative to measure for H2S in real-time using special process analyzers.
Using H2S analyzers to measure for H2S in the wastewater byproduct allows control of odors and keeps personnel safe from H2S.
KECO has designed effective real-time H2S analyzers to handle the measurement and control in wastewater treatment plants that use biodigestors (aerobic / anaerobic digestors).
