Wastewater entering the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) often contains a range of volatile contaminants, such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), ammonia and odor-causing compounds.
Effectively removing these challenging compounds is critical for ensuring environmental compliance and achieving the highest possible quality for treated wastewater.
How Wastewater Treatment Plants Improve Water Quality
To effectively manage volatile contaminants, examine the standard fractionated removal process used by many facilities. Modern wastewater treatment typically employs three primary stages to remove solids, nutrients and contaminants before discharge:
- Primary treatment processes: Physically removing large solids and suspended matter from the water.
- Secondary treatment processes: Relying on biological processes to consume organic waste and nutrients.
- Tertiary treatment processes: Acting as an advanced polishing step, utilizing specialized physical and chemical separation methods to remove lingering contaminants, trace chemicals and heavy metals that the first two stages miss.
Wastewater Treatment Regulations Behind Higher Effluent Standards
Under the Clean Water Act, the EPA and state environmental agencies enforce rigorous National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits. These tightening discharge limits are pushing facilities to upgrade their tertiary treatment capabilities.
Relying on outdated or inefficient methods can lead to compliance failures, making advanced water treatment solutions essential for adhering to modern water treatment regulations.
The Overlooked Link Between Air Emissions and Water Quality
Once you successfully remove chemicals from water, they often volatilize into the air. Odors, VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and off-gases generated during wastewater processing create a secondary environmental challenge.
Failing to manage these air emissions can result in air quality compliance violations, hazardous working conditions for plant workers and community complaints about odor.
Using Air Stripping to Remove Volatile Contaminants from Wastewater
To manage volatile contaminants effectively, facilities can utilize air stripping water treatment. This technology is highly efficient at removing VOCs, ammonia and odorous compounds that are notoriously difficult to treat using only biological methods. Air stripping is effective for ammonia, provided the proper pH adjustments and temperatures are achieved.
In a packed tower air stripper, contaminated wastewater flows downward while a high-velocity stream of clean air is blown upward. This counter-current process forces volatile contaminants out of the liquid phase and into the air stream, achieving the targeted removal and improving effluent water quality.
Scrubbers and Packing Media as Part of an Integrated WWTP Solution
Capturing the off-gas from an air stripper is the final step in a complete environmental compliance strategy. MACH Engineering provides integrated WWTP solutions using wet scrubber systems and highly engineered tower packing media like Tri-Packs® to maximize mass transfer efficiency.
By customizing the tower packing to your specific process conditions, we ensure both the air stripper and the scrubber operate at peak performance. This seamlessly treats the stripper’s off-gas and odor streams at the source, supporting overall water quality, clean air and complete regulatory compliance.
Why Trust MACH Engineering for WWTP Process Design
As environmental regulations continue to place stricter limits on volatile contaminants, WWTPs need equipment they can trust. Whether you need to remove difficult VOCs from your facility’s wastewater or treat the resulting off-gas, MACH Engineering provides the custom-designed packed towers and scrubbers that make processes more efficient.
Our team specializes in modeling the fate of volatile contaminants and designing the exact packed towers, internals and odor control systems required to remove them. We provide:
- Practical and highly efficient separation designs
- Comprehensive process simulation
- Custom vessel fabrication
Contact Us Today to Design Your Complete WWTP Solution
Protect your facility’s compliance by removing volatile contaminants. Reach out to our team today for a custom system design and quote.
