Wastewater

What is Industrial Wastewater?

Water is a key component to many manufacturing, refining, and energy processes. Process water will end its service as industrial wastewater. The wastewater contains contaminants like metals, organics, chemicals, or other by-products of its use in manufacturing. As such, wastewater often requires treatment before it can be re-used or released into the environment as effluent. Any physical or chemical preparation of the water for re-use or disposal is considered industrial wastewater treatment.

Who Can Benefit From Wastewater Testing?

Industries such as mining, food & beverage, metals, power generation, oil & gas, chemical, and general manufacturing share many of the same wastewater treatment needs and treatment technologies. In some cases, even water systems associated with HVAC systems produce waters that the facility must consider as wastewater and treat. While there are common elements between water treatment across industries, many of these industries will have unique contaminants that will present unique challenges.

Why is Wastewater Testing Important?

Many producers of industrial wastewater are also subject to National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting and heavily rely on testing to ensure compliance with these permits. These permits limit the concentration of contaminants in wastewater effluent to protect people’s health and the environment.

The testing and monitoring of wastewater influent and effluent is central to the determination of how to apply a treatment program as well as gauging its success. The ramifications for failing to properly treat the water can range from out of specification products to large governmental fines or even legal consequences. Most importantly, there may be health or safety concerns with improperly treated industrial wastewater.

High-Quality Products for Wastewater Testing

Testing the industrial wastewater prior to, during, and post treatment relies on having the proper equipment. The items required to perform water testing are generally packaged in the form of a test kit. These kits can be comprised of reagents, testing apparatus such as laboratory glassware, and/or instrumentation such as handheld or bench type meters and analyzers. These kits may be dedicated to a single parameter or may contain the necessary equipment to perform a multitude of tests.

Some of the commonly measured analytes that are shared with other industries are hardness, alkalinity, pH, conductivity, oxidizers, reducing agents, chelants, and even some metals. In some cases the methods of testing are specific to wastewater. This is usually due to the difference in concentration ranges for industrial wastewater analytes. Occasionally the methods are altered to account for presences of process contaminants unique to industrial wastewater.

Key Analytes to Measure In Industrial Wastewater Treatment

Turbidity
Total Organic Carbon (TOC)
Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD)
Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD)
Polymers, Flocculants, and Coagulants
Solids
Metals
Process contaminates
Nutrients
Biological testing (Dip Slide, ATP, Plate Counts, etc.)
Color and Odor
Freeze Points
Total Suspended Solids (TSS)