The Complete Course in Water and Wastewater Treatment

Understand how disinfection uses chemical and physical methods to inactivate pathogens in water, with primary and secondary stages, residual disinfectants, and methods like chlorination, UV, and boiling.

Explore minor water disinfection methods, including boiling at 100 degrees celsius to inactivate pathogens, lime with calcium oxide or hydroxide, and UV irradiation, noting turbidity effects and no residuals.

Explore minor methods of disinfection, including ozone, bromine and iodine pills, potassium permanganate, and silver ionizers, highlighting mechanisms, disinfection effectiveness, limitations such as residual capacity, and cost considerations.

Learn chlorination as a major disinfection method, how chlorine dosing creates a residual disinfectant in drinking water and its varying effectiveness against bacteria, viruses, and protozoa.

Explore forms of chlorination, including free chlorine, chloramines, and hypochlorite, and how pH drives hypochlorous acid vs hypochlorite, for effective disinfection and taste considerations.

Explore major disinfection methods by examining calcium hypochlorite, sodium hypochlorite, chlorine gas, and chlorine dioxide, including dosing, pH effects, residuals, and practical uses such as swimming pools.

Discuss chlorine dose, chlorine demand, and contact time, and how pH, temperature, and residual chlorine influence DBP formation, including THMs and HAA.

Explore the major methods of disinfection by detailing plain, pre, post, double, breakpoint, and super chlorination, plus dechlorination and residual chlorine management for safe water.

Explore chlorination equipment for water treatment, including hypochlorite liters, chlorine cylinders, vacuum and direct feed coordinators, and safety considerations for chlorine gas handling.

Understand the theory of filtration for water treatment, using sand filtration to remove suspended particles, turbidity, and microorganisms via mechanical straining, sedimentation, biological action, and electrolyte changes.

Explore filter media for water treatment, including sand, gravels, anthracite, garnet, and alternatives like coconut husk, rice husk, and crushed glass; learn how particle size and uniformity influence filtration.

Explore gravity filtration via slow sand filters, where water passes through sand and gravel under gravity, with a biological biofilm on the surface driving filtration and producing purified water.

Explore rapid sand filters, a gravity filtration method for large-scale water treatment, featuring a sand bed 60–75 cm, gravel base, underdrainage, and backwash controls.

Understand horizontal pressure filters, their steel pressure vessels, and the use of sand or anthracite media. Learn about over drain distribution, under drainage, backwash and rinsing procedures.

Explore vertical pressure filters for granular media filtration in enclosed vessels using sand, activated carbon, or anthracite, ideal for small to medium plants with modular, expandable design.

Understand how pressure sand filters use vertical or horizontal vessels with layered media (sand, pebbles, gravel) and a header distributor to remove turbidity, and how backwashing regenerates the filter.

Learn the multi grade filter, a depth sand filter with layered silica sands 4–6, 2–4, and 6–8 mm, to remove suspended solids and reduce turbidity for pre-treatment applications.

Learn how activated carbon filters use porous carbon media to adsorb organics, chlorine, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals, with adsorption driven by particle size, concentration, temperature, and contact time.

Learn how dual media filters combine anthracite and sand to remove turbidity and suspended solids as small as 10–20 microns, with higher filtration rates and longer bed life.

Explore multimedia filters as pressure filter vessels with layered media—anthracite, sand, and garnet—designed to reduce SDI and total suspended solids.

Learn about cartridge filters, including surface and depth filters, meltblown, string wound, and pleated cartridges, their housings, and how differential pressure indicates when to replace filters.

Explore the surface water treatment plant process and how treatment makes drinking water safe by removing bacteria, viruses, and contaminants like nitrates and pesticides.

This lecture presents screening as the first unit operation in water treatment, removing rags and plastics to protect pumps, and explains inclined bar screens and their benefits.

Compare manual and mechanical bar screens in water treatment, detailing fixed grids, hand rake cleaning, and diverse screen types such as chain driven, catenary, and rotary drum.

Aeration uses air and water contact, via various aerators, to remove gases by scrubbing and oxidation, including volatile organic chemicals, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, iron, and magnesium.

Learn how coagulation and flocculation remove turbidity, color, and bacteria from surface water through flash mixing, flocculation, and sedimentation.

Explore how aluminium and iron coagulants remove turbidity and color, and how mixing, flocculation, and sedimentation form macroflocs for efficient water treatment.

Understand sedimentation in water treatment, where gravity causes suspended solids to settle in a sedimentation tank. Compare plain sedimentation with coagulation, and study settling velocity, flow velocity, and sludge formation.

Understand the four zones of sedimentation basins—inlet, settling, sludge, and outlet. Identify tank types by operation and shape, including fill-and-draw, continuous-flow, circular, rectangular, and hopper-bottom.

Explain the clarifier circulator that combines flocculation and clarification, with an inner fluctuation basin, outer clarifier, and sludge scraper, and compare tube and plate settlers to boost sedimentation efficiency.

Explore how a conventional surface water treatment plant collects source water, screens debris, aerates, adds coagulants to form flocs, allows sedimentation, filters, disinfects, and stores treated water for distribution.

Define wastewater as water altered by humans from domestic, grey water, blackwater, industrial, and storm sources. Identify contaminants such as suspended solids, biodegradable organics, nutrients, metals, and pathogens.

Analyze the physical characteristics of wastewater, including color, odor, turbidity, temperature, and total solids. Understand how these factors influence wastewater treatment processes and design.

Explore the chemical characteristics of wastewater, including pH, alkalinity, dissolved oxygen, BOD, COD, and total organic carbon. Use these metrics to guide pretreatment and biological treatment processes.

The lecture explains fats, oils and grease as insoluble waste that clogs pipes and disrupts treatment, and outlines nitrogen and phosphorus forms, including ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, and phosphates, in wastewater.

Explore the biological characteristics of wastewater, including enteric pathogens, viruses, and protozoa; identify indicator organisms like coliforms and E. coli and categorize bacteria by oxygen and temperature.

An overview of biological characteristics of wastewater, highlighting fungi, viruses, protozoa, bacteria, and their roles in wastewater treatment, including spores, mycelium, bacteriophages, and protozoan groups.

Explore the introduction to sewage treatment plants, outlining primary, secondary, and tertiary stages that remove solids, organics, nutrients, and pathogens to protect public health and environmental quality.

Explains challenging words of sewage treatment plant, including activated sludge, mlss, mlvss, svi, detention time, hrt, srt, and fm ratio, and their roles in design and operation.

Explore the biological treatment process for wastewater, highlighting activated sludge, aeration, and sludge recycling. Discover how bacteria oxidize organics, separate sludge, and remove nitrogen via nitrification and denitrification.

Explore the different types of activated sludge processes, including tapered aeration, extended aeration, contact stabilization, and oxidation ditch, and how they optimize aeration, diffuser spacing, and sludge settling.

Explore the sequence batch reactor (sbr) and its fill, react, settle, decant, idle cycle in a single-basin system. Achieve denitrification, phosphorus removal, and controlled aeration with decanter and time-based controls.

Explore membrane bioreactor (MBR) wastewater treatment, combining activated sludge with membrane filtration for clear, high-quality effluent; compare side-stream and submerged configurations, membrane types, and cleaning strategies.

Explore the aerated lagoon, a simple wastewater treatment system using artificial aeration to promote biological oxidation. Learn lagoon design, mixing, and aeration options, including diffused, turbine, static, and surface units.

Explore trickling filters as an attached-growth biological treatment, where biofilm on media like rocks and plastic oxidizes organic matter, with distribution, underdrainage, and recirculation affecting efficiency.

Explore the rotating biological contactor, RBC, a fixed-bed disc system that removes organic matter and ammonia via rotating discs and aeration, typically in multi-stage trains for efficient secondary treatment.

Discover how moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) uses thousands of polyethylene biofilm carriers in an aerated tank to achieve robust, compact wastewater treatment with easy operation and no sludge recycle.

Explain fixed bed biofilm reactor (fbr) as an attached-growth system with film media and aeration diffusers, enabling efficient BOD and ammonia removal in high-contaminant wastewater.

Learn the anaerobic biological treatment process that degrades high-organic wastewater without oxygen, producing biogas via acidification and methane production stages driven by acidogenic and methanogenic microorganisms.

Explore anaerobic lagoons and anaerobic sludge blanket reactors, including upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactors, for pre-treatment of high-strength industrial and municipal wastewater and biogas production.

Survey anaerobic wastewater treatment types, including expanded granular sludge bed and upflow anaerobic sludge blanket concepts, anaerobic filter reactors, and baffled septic variants, emphasizing biogas production and treatment efficiency.

The grit chamber, a primary treatment unit, slows flow to settle inorganic grit such as sand and ash, protecting equipment and enabling grit removal.

Understand the membrane bioreactor plant process, from pretreatment and headwork to the mbr unit with anoxic and aeration tanks and membranes.

Discover how an effluent treatment plant purifies industrial wastewater, enabling reuse and safe disposal through preliminary to tertiary treatment using physical, chemical, and biological processes.

Explore the effluent treatment plant process across biological, physical-chemical, and combined models. Learn how screening, equalization, pH control, aeration, settling, and sludge handling remove contaminants from textile wastewater.

Explore the physical, chemical, and biological steps of an effluent treatment plant, from screening and neutralization to coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, activated sludge, filtration, and disinfection for domestic use.

Explore how reverse osmosis uses high pressure to push water through a semi-permeable membrane, removing most salts and contaminants and producing permeate as product water and concentrate or brine.

Explore membrane filtration and compare microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, and reverse osmosis, and learn how pore size and driving forces govern removal of bacteria, parasites, and hardness.

Explore polymeric membrane materials, featuring cellulose acetate, cellulose triacetate, and aromatic polyamide thin-film composite membranes. Compare performance factors such as salt rejection, chlorine tolerance, operating temperature, surface charge, and pretreatment.

Explore outer membrane concepts and compare membrane modules—plate and frame, hollow fiber, spiral wound, and tubular—focusing on module structure, feed and permeate paths, and performance trade-offs.

Explore FRP membrane housings as robust pressure vessels for spiral wound reverse osmosis elements, comparing pressure capacity, sizes, temperature limits, and assembly basics.

Explore membrane housing configurations for reverse osmosis, featuring end port and side port pressure vessels, multi-port options, and one- to multi-stage designs that optimize recovery and permeate quality.

Understand how reverse osmosis membrane fouling and scaling arise from particulates, organics, biofilms, and inorganic salts, and use proper pretreatment to protect membranes and reduce energy use.

Explore acids, caustics, and chlorination chemicals used in RO plant feed to control pH and minimize calcium carbonate scaling, including HCl, H2SO4, NaOH, and activated carbon filter.

Explain chemicals used in RO pretreatment, focusing on SBS as the dechlorination agent, its dosing and storage, and compare with sodium sulfide and sulfate, plus anti-scale additives and monitoring.

Explore the components and specifications of the reverse osmosis plant, from the feed pump and pre filters to membranes, detailing dual media, activated carbon, micron filters, and 250–2000 lph capacities.

Learn the RO plant process from the raw water tank through dual media and activated carbon pre-treatment to membrane filtration, followed by disinfection, pH adjustment, UV treatment, and storage.

Restore reverse osmosis membrane performance through on-site cleaning in place or off-site cleaning, using low pH or high pH treatments, following membrane specs, and flushing with permeate.

Explore desalination, a process that produces low-salinity product water and brine from saline feed water via membrane methods like reverse osmosis and electrodialysis.