Centralized Wastewater

Treatment
Working with a Centralized Wastewater Treatment Facility
There are several benefits to using a centralized wastewater treatment facility.
Industrial companies often prefer outsourcing their wastewater processing for
the following reasons:
Less environmental impact in comparison to decentralized wastewater
facilities. Using a centralized wastewater treatment plant requires less land
and fewer resources to process large volumes of wastewater.
Effortless compliance with environmental regulations. The offsite wastewater
treatment facility is responsible for maintaining compliance with
environmental regulations.
More efficient processes than other treatment options. Centralized
wastewater management companies utilize the latest technologies to create
efficient and effective processes, which reduces the environmental impacts
even further.
An additional benefit is that onsite personnel from the industrial companies
don’t need to be experts in wastewater management. The CWT vendor acts as
a trusted resource to ensure compliance and properly treat the waste streams
• A centralized water treatment approach, also known as
conventional treatment, uses a combined process of coagulation,
flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, and disinfection. It treats
water in a central location and then distributes water via
dedicated distribution networks.
• In urban areas, a centralized water treatment system can treat
large volumes of water at high rates to accommodate all
residential, business, and industrial uses. This approach is well
developed and can effectively remove practically any range of raw
water turbidity along with harmful pathogens, including bacteria,
virus, and protozoa.
• However, the capital cost and operating and maintenance costs
for a centralized system can be significant. It consists of water
source development, construction of significant infrastructures
(e.g., the treatment facility, reservoir, and water distribution
main), implementation of automated monitor and control
systems, and on-site operators.
• Smaller communities can reduce costs by using a “package
plant”, where treatment units are preassembled in a factory, skid
mounted, transported to the site, and virtually ready to operate.
However, even then a centralized treatment system may be still
financially out of reach for some underdeveloped communities.
Centralized Water Treatment System
A centralized water treatment system in a city can
process enormous volumes of water at high rates to meet
the needs of all residential, commercial, and industrial
users. This method has been well tested and can
efficiently remove a wide variety of raw water turbidity as
well as hazardous pathogens such as bacteria, virus, and
protozoa.
In centralized systems, wastewater is collected and
treated in a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) located
outside the served area; conversely, in decentralized
systems, wastewater is treated near the source (
Crites and Tchobanoglous, 1998).